Homeland Security Science & Technology at the University of the District of Columbia: April 2015

Thursday, April 30, 2015

California drought highlights the state’s economic divide

Published 1 May 2015

As much of Southern California enters into the spring and warmer temperatures, the effects of California’s historic drought begin to manifest themselves in the daily lives of residents, highlighting the economic inequality in the ways people cope.

As theNew York Times reports, following Governor Jerry Brown’s (D) unprecedented water rationing regulations, a deeper economic divide is beginning to show, ranging from wealthier residents in Cowan Heights who choose no longer to water their grass, to those less fortunate who are now choosing which days that they skip a bath.
“This is a high fire-risk area,” said John Sears of Cowan Heights. “If we cut back 35 percent and all these homes just let everything go, what’s green will turn brown. Tell me how the fire risk will increase.”
Others, however, see it differently.
“To me the issue is keeping down the cost,” said Alysia Thomas of Compton. “Conservation is a cost-saving thing for me.”
These differences in how Californians view the effects on their lives of less water consumption highlights a bigger problem for the state — how to convince all residents to work together to conserve.
“The wealthy use more water, electricity and natural gas than anyone else,” said Stephanie Pincetl, the director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “They have bigger properties. They are less price sensitive. So if you can afford it, you use it. Then it becomes a moral question. But lots of wealthy people don’t pay their own bills, so they don’t know what the water costs.”
Others contend, however, that a newfound awareness of water use should become a responsibility.
“Just because you can afford to use something doesn’t mean you should,” said Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton. “We’re all in this together. We all have to make sure we consume less.”
Compton and Cowan Heights also reflect the differing average incomes within the state. In Compton, the median annual household income is $42,953, with 26 percent of the population below the poverty line. In Cowan Heights, the average is $122,662 with only three percent below the poverty line.
“We’ve gotten so tight over here,” said Rod Lopez, a contractor living in Compton. “Everything is irrigated over there. They may get fined for it — they don’t care. They have the money to pay the fines.”
For now, Golden State Water is imposing a four-tier pricing system that adds additional fees for higher water use, the kind of conservation-incentive pricing that many regulators and legislators are pushing for. Still, water prices have drastically increased in the state, rising 93 percent since 2005. The water provider has announce d that it would also issue $500 a day fines to those who do not limit their use in communities such as Cowan Heights.
Overall, however, many agencies and companies are still assessing how to deal with the new regulations, and how to fairly treat those that they serve — a problem that will take time to provide a more equal solution.
“That is the challenge,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “We are finding it works with 90 percent of the public. You still have certain wealthy communities that won’t bother. And the price penalty doesn’t impact them. It sends a bad message.”

Lawmakers reintroduce “Aaron’s Law” to curb CFAA abuses

Published 1 May 2015

A bipartisan group of lawmakers have reintroduced a bill known as “Aaron’s Law,” which aims to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). CFAA has been cited by civil libertarians (EFF) as having been abused to the point where it now stifles research and innovation, as well as civil liberties. the measure is intended to honor Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-founder who was apprehended after downloading millions of scholarly articles from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology database in 2011. Following his arrest, with charges under the CFAA which might lead to a maximum sentence of thirty-five years in prison, Swartz committed suicide at age 26, leading some to charge that the aggression of prosecutors led to the his decision.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers have reintroduced a bill known as “Aaron’s Law,” which aims to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). CFAA has been cited by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as having been abused to the point where it now stifles research and innovation, as well as civil liberties.
As theChristian Science Monitor reports, the measure is intended to honor Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-founder who was apprehended after downloading millions of scholarly articles from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology database in 2011. Following his arrest, with charges under the CFAA which might lead to a maximum sentence of thirty-five years in prison, Swartz committed suicide at age 26, leading some to charge that the aggression of prosecutors led to the his decision.
“I lost my partner and best friend because of unfair and absurd prosecution under the CFAA,” said Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, who has helped support Lofgren’s bill. “Aaron’s Law would make it impossible for prosecutors to abuse their power in the same way.”
Aaron’s Law was first introduced by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D–California) in 2013, but failed to pass. Now, a larger group of legislators are reintroducing it with the hope that it will “limit the scope of the current anti-hacking statute and restrict prosecutorial action for certain CFAA violations. It would also make it impossible to press charges for violating a terms-of-service agreement or an employer’s computer use policy.”
The bill would remove language that makes “exceeding authorized access” a crime and would more harshly punish repeat offenders rather than those that only do it once.
The CFAA was written in 1984, long before it was possible to imagine the ways that computers would affect the daily lives of Americans today. For example, under the current CFAA, a researcher can be charged for testing a computer system’s security in a way that exceeds what they are authorized to do, even if there is no malicious intent behind the breach — known as “grey-hat” hacking, and often leading to silence and unresolved breaches that could benefit from a proper patch.
“The CFAA was originally intended to cover the hacking of defense department and bank computers, but it’s been expanded so that it now covers virtually every computer on the Internet while meting out disproportionate penalties for virtual crimes. [The reform] bill is a step forward as it makes key fixes in a law that has for years been misinterpreted because of its vague definitions,” said Mark Jaycox of the EFF.
Many lawmakers agree.
“Violating a smartphone app’s terms of service or sharing academic articles should not be punished more harshly than a government agency hacking into Senate files,” said Senator Ron Wyden (D–Oregon), a cosponsor of the bill. “The CFAA is so inconsistently and capriciously applied it results in misguided, heavy-handed prosecution.”
Many hope that Aaron’s Law could be one of the first steps toward a greater progress.
“There are a whole patchwork of laws that are 20, 30 years outdated that don’t make sense given the structure of the contemporary Internet,” Stinebrickner-Kauffman added. “[Aaron’s Law] is not going to fix all of those things, but it’s certainly going to take us one-step forward into the 21st Century.”

4,300 people in more than fifteen were killed in 504 suicide bombings in 2014

Published 1 May 2015

A new report on global trends in suicide terrorism shows that during 2014 more than 4,300 people in more than fifteen countries were killed in 504 suicide bombings. Out of the fifteen countries, Afghanistan and Iraq led the world last year in suicide attacks with an increase in Iraq. The report highlights key data on world hot spots for attacks and also shows that, with the exception of Nigeria, the majority of suicide bombers were males. The researchers also found that car bombs were the most prevalent weapons, and the targets were overwhelmingly security forces.

A new report on global trends in suicide terrorism shows that during 2014 more than 4,300 people in more than fifteen countries were killed in suicide bombings. Out of the fifteen countries, Afghanistan and Iraq led the world last year in suicide attacks with an increase in Iraq.
The report shows that Iraq accounts for 40 percent of all such events in the world. “If you’re just following the news on a daily basis, you might have the idea that the entire world has suddenly been engulfed in terrorism and that somehow that was worse in 2014,” said Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science and the founding faculty director of the Chicago Project on Security & Terrorism (CPOST), which published the report. Pape said, however, that the data show that the increase was limited to Iraq.
A University of Chicago release reports that the CPOST 2014 Suicide Attack Index is the first one-year summary of suicide attacks that occurred across the world. Pape and his team of CPOST researchers compiled the index and accompanying report. They showed that the total number of confirmed attacks reached 504 in 2014.
CPOST research director Keven Ruby, Ph.D. ‘12, said one surprise the report made clear is that the number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan has remained relatively constant for several years. “That’s particularly worrisome from a U.S. policy perspective,” said Ruby, “because the United States wants to withdraw militarily from Afghanistan, but there are no signs that the campaign by the Afghan Taliban is letting up.”
The CPOST index highlights key data on world hot spots for attacks and also shows that, with the exception of Nigeria, the majority of suicide bombers were males. The researchers also found that car bombs were the most prevalent weapons, and the targets were overwhelmingly security forces.
In 2004 Pape created CPOST, an international security affairs research institute at the University of Chicago. As its director, he heads a team of investigators, including several students, who track globally all suicide incidents. “We decided that we should do what nobody else is doing with these terrorism databases, and that is to put the information together on a single page to summarize what happened in the world of suicide attack last year,” said Pape. “We’re trying to set the standard for reporting this information.”
Fourth-year and research associate McIntyre Skarzynski is among the team of students who carefully investigate each suicide attack by gathering as much data as possible from a variety of sources. “We will have at least two independent news sources, usually more, plus documents from the terrorist organizations and government reports,” said Skarzynski.
“Each student has a different region of the world to track. We look at each attack to see whom the terrorists were attacking, how many people were killed, and where the attack was taking place. We’re constantly checking each other’s work to make sure the database is as accurate as possible,” Skarzynski added.
“We’re collecting information in the way a medical researcher might collect information on lung cancer,” said Pape. “Let’s call this the disease of suicide attack. We’re looking for specific risk factors for the deadliest threats we face from terrorism in the world.”
Pape and his CPOST team hope the information from the suicide attack index and report will be helpful to policy makers, academic researchers and journalists to put the data into context.
“We’re doing this to save lives,” said Pape. “We want to provide the best data in the world to develop better policies to save lives and to mitigate harm against bystander populations. If you have the wrong policy because you don’t have good enough data, you can actually cause more harm than good.”
— Read more in Suicide Attack Index: Global Trends in Suicide Terrorism in 2014 (CPOST, University of Chicago, April 2015)

Friends recall indications of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s growing radicalization

Published 1 May 2015

In the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, FBI agents interviewed two friends of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who, with his brother Dzhokhar, planted bombs at the marathon on 15 April. A paralegal on the defense team read aloud portions of notes from the interviews at the sentencing phase of Dzhokhar’s trial on Tuesday.

According to the Boston Globe, Viskhan Vakhabov, who was born in Chechnya and who lived in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan before moving to Chelsea in 2004 with his family as part of a United Nations program, was interviewed by the FBI two weeks after the bombing. He told investigators that he and Tamerlan hung out together socially and that he was aware of Tamerlan’s 2012 trip to Dagestan. He saw Tamerlan between four and seven times after he returned from that trip. At one point, Tamerlan gave him a copy of the Quran.
Vakhabov’s younger brother attended the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth with Dzhokhar. In early April 2013, Vakhabov gave his younger brother and Dzhokhar a ride home from college. Upon their arrival, Tamerlan asked Vakhabov to come inside, but he was reluctant, knowing that doing so would mean a discussion of Tamerlan’s radical beliefs. Shortly after that event, Vakhabov deleted Tamerlan’s phone number from his phone.
Another friend, Russian-born Magomed Dolakov, said he accompanied the Tsarnaev brothers to the Wai Kru gym in Allston just days before the attack. Dolakov moved to Cambridge in July 2012 after earning a physics degree at a Russian university. He told FBI investigators that he met Tamerlan at the Prospect Street mosque in Cambridge in August 2012, and soon after they began to discuss Islam. Tamerlan’s radical beliefs were apparent early on at their first meeting, Dolakov said.
That same month, Dolakov went to a Quincy mosque with Tamerlan, after which they relaxed on a nearby beach with a third friend and discussed a recent suicide bombing. Tamerlan called the victims of the bombings “non-believers,” and in a follow up conversation said the mujahideen were “brave” and that he wanted to join the movement. Tamerlan also told Dolakov that “there’s a lot of knowledge on the Internet,” and suggested sites Dolakov could visit. Dolakov recalled asking Tamerlan if he worked, to which Tamerlan replied “Allah” sent him money.
Dolakov said the last time he encountered the Tsarnaevs was at the Prospect Street mosque three days before the bombing. Dolakov traveled with the Tsarnaev brothers to the Wai Kru gym where they worked out for two hours. On that trip, Dolakov recalled seeing a “medium-sized cardboard box” in the Tsarnaevs’ vehicle, which, Tamerlan told him, was full of clothes to be sent to his mother. A white sheet covered items in the vehicle’s trunk, Dolakov told investigators.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Flood disaster risk is more complex than expected

Published 29 April 2015

Researchers have shed further light on the complex issue of flood risk, with the latest findings showing the potential for flood risk to both increase and decrease in the same geographic area. There are two major types of floods from rivers: one is caused by heavy rain sustained over long periods of time that might affect large catchments over a wide geographic area; the other is caused by short but extremely heavy rain events, which might only last for thirty minutes and is usually localized, often called “flash flooding.” “At the global scale we’re increasingly confident that flood risk will change, because a warming atmosphere means more heavy rain. However, for any individual location the changes to flood risk will depend on each region’s rainfall patterns. Under certain circumstances the flood risk may actually decrease,” says one researcher.

Research from the University of Adelaide has shed further light on the complex issue of flood risk, with the latest findings showing the potential for flood risk to both increase and decrease in the same geographic area.
A team from the University’s School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering has presented the findings of their study in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change, highlighting the differences between flood events.
There are two major types of floods from rivers: one is caused by heavy rain sustained over long periods of time that might affect large catchments over a wide geographic area; the other is caused by short but extremely heavy rain events, which might only last for thirty minutes and is usually localized, often called “flash flooding.”
“One of the common assertions of the climate change discussion is that ‘flood risk will increase’. And on balance, yes that’s probably correct, but we’ve found the issue is much more complex than such a blanket statement,” says corresponding author and Senior Lecturer Dr. Seth Westra.
“At the global scale we’re increasingly confident that flood risk will change, because a warming atmosphere means more heavy rain. However, for any individual location the changes to flood risk will depend on each region’s rainfall patterns. Under certain circumstances the flood risk may actually decrease,” he says.
A University of Adelaide release reports that the team, including the paper’s lead author Dr. Feifei Zheng and co-author Dr. Michael Leonard, analyzed data from rainfall gauges across the greater metropolitan area of Sydney. This data had been collected every five minutes from 1966 to 2012, representing a wealth of information.
“Our research reveals that short but intense rainfall events increased, while longer sustained heavy rainfall events tended to decline. This has complicated implications for flood risk, since floods in small catchments are usually caused by short rainfall events, whereas floods in large catchments require longer periods of heavy rainfall,” says Dr. Zheng, a senior Research Associate from the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering.
“Our results also show a distinct seasonal variation. In summer, extreme rainfall increased strongly, while in the remaining seasons the changes were smaller and sometimes extreme rainfall even decreased,” Dr. Zheng says.
This research group is at the forefront of research looking at the impact of short-duration rainfall, and how that may be affected by climate change. Dr. Westra says each region will have its own unique features that determine the flood risk from both short and long-term rainfall events.
“You can’t directly compare patterns in Sydney with those of Brisbane, Adelaide, or even New York or London, because each area is unique. But what we are showing is that historical changes to rainfall patterns are much more complicated than is commonly appreciated. This means there’s a lot more nuance in how flood disasters might change as a result of climate change, which hasn’t been part of the commentary on flood risk until now,” Dr. Westra says.
— Read more in Feifei Zheng et al., “Opposing local precipitation extremes,” Nature Climate Change 5 (23 April 2015): 389–90 (doi:10.1038/nclimate2579)

Preventing a Fukushima-like disaster in Europe

Published 29 April 2015

In 2005, Europe was exposed to a potential risk of a nuclear disaster caused by the flooding of the Loviisa nuclear power plant in Finland. Sea levels rose by 1.73 meter above normal levels, due to a storm. As a result, flood defenses have been reinforced.
However, latest research reveals that more improvements could still to be made to optimize safety and better protect people from potential future accidents. Youris says that floods are likely to occur more frequently than anticipated when nuclear power plants where built, due to climate change.
In Finland several changes in accident management have been introduced, to prevent future nuclear waste leaks. “From our point of view, the priority is to ensure that there is an lternative route to the plant accessible in a flood. By using our pumps and the Loviisa plants’ own equipment, water at the site can be reduced,” says Peter Johansson, CEO of the Fire and Rescue Services of the local Eastern Uusimaa department attached to the Loviisa power plant.
Further precautions have also been taken. “The latest security investment is the building of four cooling towers that are independent from seawater intake, which are built ten meters above the sea level to avoid them from being flooded,” explains Samuli Savolainen, group leader at the Loviisa plant.
The Fukushima accident, in March 2011, brought renewed scrutiny towards the resistance of nuclear power plants to natural disasters. The EU stress tests required after the meltdown in Japan, led to the introduction of a precise Severe Accident Management plan, according to Thomas Buddas, vice-CEO of the Loviisa nuclear power plant. “We are confident that flooding events can be predicted well in beforehand as we cooperate with the Finnish Meteorological Institute,” Buddas tells youris.com. He explains that the top priority is to protect the reactor and the fuel tanks from seawater, and a series of waterproof doors and flood gates have been installed.
Nuclear plants, in particular, are one of the focus infrastructures of interest to a European project called RAIN, due to be completed by the end of 2017. It aims to detect system vulnerability and identify hazards as a result of extreme weather events. As part of the project, Timo Hellenberg, CEO of critical infrastructure protection consultancy Hellenberg International, based in Helsinki, Finland, conducted an analysis of the crisis management process.
Despite all these measures, his findings show that there is still room for improvement.
“Foreign specialists should be involved in the emergency training sessions. There is too little inter-agency cooperation. But this is a general European trend,” explains Hellenberg. “Emergency trainings should be organised between Finnish agencies and neighbouring countries.”
“Finland is in the forefront in nuclear safety, including technological solutions and nuclear safety culture,” notes Christer Pursiainen, professor of Societal Safety and Environment at the Department of Engineering and Safety of the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. Nevertheless, “The risk of a serious nuclear accident remains always above zero anywhere as a possibility of unexpected phenomena taking place exists.”

U.S. adopts a more assertive cyber defense posture

Published 29 April 2015

Recent cyberattacks and intrusions by hackers, operating alone or backed by nation-states, have prompted the Pentagon and DHS to reaffirm their commitment to upholding the reliability and integrity of America’s cyber network and the systems connected to it. Americans rely on the connected Web to deliver critical services such as water and electricity, and should the Web be breached by bad actors, the consequences could threaten national security.
In a recent speech at Stanford University, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told a room of Silicon Valley executives and cybersecurity professionals that one of the “primary aspects” of the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy is to work with domestic firms to lower the risk of a cyberattack endangering national security. “Because American businesses own, operate and see approximately 90 percent of our national networks, the private sector must be a key partner,” he said, adding that “if companies themselves don’t invest, our country’s collective cyber posture is weakened and our ability to augment that protection is limited.”
Energy Wirereports that at last week’s RSA security conference in San Francisco, DHS chief Jeh Johnson stopped by to discuss the agency’s mission and search for cyber talent. Both DHS and the Pentagon plan to open offices in Silicon Valley. Experts say the agencies’ focus on cybersecurity and engagement with the private sector will prompt a new level of thinking within the cybersecurity sector. “If we look at cyberspace as a hostile environment and there are bad people out there who want to do bad things to us, it may cause a wholesale re-examination of the way we build our systems in the first place,” noted Adam Firestone, president of cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Government Security Solutions Inc.
Last year’s cyberattack on Sony Pictures, which the government has attributed to North Korea, combined with reports that unclassified Pentagon, State Department, and White House communications systems were breached by hackers believed to be Russian, has led the U.S. government to call out its adversaries in cyberspace: North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China, as they are all developing cyber capabilities “to target the U.S. homeland and damage U.S. interests.”
The Pentagon’s cyber strategy, highlighted by Carter, noted that the United States would respond to confirmed intrusions “in accordance with applicable law.” “(The United States is) not going to necessarily hack back in response,” said Ben FitzGerald, director of the technology and national security program at the Center for New American Security. President Barack Obama signed an executive order in March giving the government more flexibility to issue economic sanction on hackers who threaten U.S. interests. “We just need to have a meaningful response — that’s a more mature way of doing it,” FitzGerald said.
Failure of the U.S. government to respond to foreign cyberattacks against private U.S. firms could lead to those firms retaliating with their own cyberattacks. Such “hack backs” are illegal, and could be costly if companies retaliate against hackers who turn out to be backed by nation-states. But “if we leave people hanging, the potential costs to their businesses are worth it, given the costs being imposed” by intellectual property theft or critical cyberattacks, FitzGerald said.

Israel worries about its own Big One

Published 29 April 2015

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Nepal, leaving more than 4,000 people dead, has alerted earthquake experts in Israel about the country’s own seismic risk, which could result in a large quake months or a few years from now. Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan are sitting on a major fault line which constitutes “a real, as well as a current, threat to the safety, social integrity, and economic well-being of the people in the region,” reads a 2007 earthquake report.
According to the Times of Israel, Israel and the Palestinian territories lie on the top of a tear in the earth’s crust running along Israel’s eastern flank, the margins of two tectonic plates, which experts deem a high seismic risk zone. Jordan sits atop the Arabian plate, which grinds northward at twenty millimeters per year relative to the African plate to its west. At least seventeen historically recorded major quakes have struck Israel in the past 2,000 years, according to a 1994 article published in the Israel Exploration Journal. The last major quake struck on 11 July 1927, killing more than 400 people and leaving “not a house in Jerusalem or Hebron… without some damage,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
According to Amotz Agnon, an earth sciences professor at Hebrew University who studies the layers of sediment on the floor of the Dead Sea, magnitude 7 quakes occur along the Jordan Valley roughly once every 1,000 years, with the last major quake occurring in 1033 and smaller quakes like the one in 1927, occurring every eighty to 120 years or so. “Every day that passes without an earthquake brings us closer to a big one,” said Dr. Rivka Amit, head of Israel’s Geological Survey.
The region is currently in a period of frequent tectonic movement. GPS monitoring of tectonic plates that meet in the Jordan Valley indicates that the plates are locked against each other, accumulating elastic energy that will eventually be released in the form of a quake. “When it’s stored on a significant depth range,” Agnon explained, “it will probably be released one day during our lifetimes, or maybe later on, but our buildings will have to sustain significant acceleration.”
Through Tama 38, Israel’s “National Outline Plan” for earthquake reinforcement and retrofitting which was launched in 2005, the Israeli government is encouraging property owners to retrofit their buildings to protect against an impending earthquake (see “Israel considering earthquake-proofing important Biblical-period structures,” HSNW, 27 January 2014).
A Science Ministry report filed a month ago claims that the program is ineffective. To date, about 2,000 buildings have been or are undergoing retrofits under Tama 38, but roughly 100,000 buildings nationwide remain at risk. Most of the retrofitting has occurred in the greater Tel Aviv area, while cities such as Eilat, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beit Shean, and Tiberias — which lie closer to fault lines — are occupied with vulnerable buildings. According to the ministry report, Israel could reduce earthquake damage by as much as two-thirds, should it budget $430 million toward retrofitting in high-risk areas.
“We are trying to find other ways or other tools to motivate people to go and reinforce their house,” said Dr. Avi Shapira, a seismologist who chairs an interministerial committee on earthquake preparedness. Israel still has “too many residential buildings that are not prepared to sustain a 6.5 earthquake” and “are poorly constructed,” endangering the lives of citizens.
Palestinian cities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are also vulnerable to seismic activity, mostly because many of their buildings are inadequately constructed. Dr. Jalal Dabbeek, head of the Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Center at Nablus’s An-Najah University, said more than 70 percent of the buildings in the seven major Palestinian cities in the West Bank were “highly vulnerable.” Even a moderate magnitude-6 earthquake would lead to widespread damage in the West Bank.

Nepal would have benefitted from a seismic early-warning system: Experts

Published 29 April 2015

As far back as the thirteenth century, Nepal experienced a major earthquake every seventy-five years or so, and just like the recent magnitude 7.8 quake, no one has been able to predict exactly when the next quake will strike. If forecasters are unable to anticipate quakes days or weeks ahead, then residents of earthquake prone areas may have to rely on early-warning systems which are able to provide a few seconds notice before an earthquake strikes. Earthquake early-warning systems have been deployed in a few seismic hot zones including Japan, Mexico, and California.

As far back as the thirteenth century, Nepal experienced a major earthquake every seventy-five years or so, and just like the recent magnitude 7.8 quake, no one has been able to predict exactly when the next quake will strike. “So far, the search for diagnostic precursors has been unsuccessful. Most geoscientists do not believe that there is a realistic prospect of accurate prediction in the foreseeable future, and the principal focus of research is on improving the forecasting of earthquakes,” according to the U.S. Geological Society (USGS).
Seismologists met in Nepal’s capital earlier this April, but were unable to predict that an earthquake would strike at the end of the month. Addressing an international conference on disaster risk reduction last month in Japan, Nepalese foreign minister Mahendra Bahadur Pandly, warned that a major earthquake in the Kathmandu valley would be devastating.
If forecasters are unable to anticipate quakes days or weeks ahead, then residents of earthquake prone areas may have to rely on early-warning systems which are able to provide a few seconds notice before an earthquake strikes.
Earthquake early-warning systems have been deployed in a few seismic hot zones including Japan, Mexico, and California. Japan’s early warning system has issued public alerts since 2007 to emergency and law enforcement agencies, some private industrial facilities, and public infrastructure projects. When the 2011 Tohoku quake struck, bullet trains, nuclear reactors, and critical factory operations shut down automatically.
During the 2014 Napa earthquake, California’s early warning system, dubbed ShakeAlert, gave the San Francisco Bay Area five to ten seconds notice before shaking began. “If Nepal had a seismic network that operated as the seismic stations in Northern California did in the Napa quake, people in Kathmandu would probably have had 15 to 20 seconds warning,” seismologist Peggy Hellweg, of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, told Newsweek.
ShakeAlert detects earthquakes using the California Integrated Seismic Network of roughly 400 ground motion sensors which identify primary waves (P-waves) as they move through the Earth at almost twice the speed of the earthquakes’ destructive S-waves, which shake the ground. Once P waves reach a seismic station, the information is transmitted via communications lines to labs, where computers calculate the origin and magnitude of the pending earthquake. Developers of ShakeAlert hope that in the near future, residents of California will receive earthquake warning alerts on their mobile phones and radio stations. California’s ShakeAlert is not yet available to the entire state or region (see “California exploring ways to fund ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system,” HSNW, 10 April 2015; and “Earthquake early-warning system to be deployed in Washington, Oregon,” HSNW, 13 February 2015).
The USGS estimated last year that it would cost $38.3 million to set up an early-warning system for the entire U.S. west coast, with annual maintenance and operations totaling $16.1 million.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Preventing a Fukushima-like disaster in Europe

Published 29 April 2015

To bolster the world’s inadequate cyber governance framework, a “Cyber WHO” is needed

Published 29 April 2015

A new report on cyber governance commissioned by Zurich Insurance Group highlights challenges to digital security and identifies new opportunities for business. It calls for the establishment of guiding principles to build resilience and the establishment of supranational governance bodies such as a Cyber Stability Board and a “Cyber WHO.”
Zurich Insurance Group and ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics, an authority on global governance, today published a report, Global cyber governance: preparing for new business risks, which proposes new measures to strengthen the global governance framework for managing evolving cyber risks.
Zurich says that the report observes that while emerging technologies such as drones, 3-D printing and self-driving cars are fundamentally changing the nature of cyber risk, the current regulation and governance regimes in place globally are inadequate to ensure the security of the world’s cyber infrastructure.
“The existing governance framework from the 20th century cannot be expected to respond sufficiently to 21st century technology,” Zurich’s Chief Risk Officer Axel Lehmann said. “We live in a world full of opportunities, but also risks. There is no better example of this than the relationship between information and communications technologies and cybersecurity. The cyber realm underpins almost all economic and societal activity — from finance to trade, information, energy and beyond.”
Geopolitical and ideological tensions between states, the report points out, are increasingly played out in cyberspace — including over matters of governance. “Growing political instability could be exploited by some governments aiming to reduce capabilities and scope of some technical institutions that provide stability and resilience to cyberspace, thus undermining its multi-stakeholder approach” said Javier Solana, president of ESADEgeo. “Isolating effective cyber governance from the current geopolitical tensions must therefore be a priority.”
Companies in almost all sectors are exposed to cyber threats with the potential to cause enormous damage in terms of reputation and physical losses, liabilities, and regulatory costs. Unchecked, these cyber threats could severely affect technical and economic development globally.
“The nature of cyber security is evolving so quickly it can be difficult for businesses to keep track of the risks let alone the solutions,” said Mike Kerner, CEO of General Insurance for Zurich. “It is very clear that businesses that want to protect themselves from cyber security and privacy risks must adopt a mindset of resilience.”
Based on a detailed mapping of the rules, institutions and procedures that form the current global cyber governance framework, the report highlighted opportunities for the private sector, civil society and policy makers to improve the current situation and facilitate the mitigation of cyber threats.
Recommendations to policymakers include the creation of a Cyber Stability Board to strengthen global institutions and insulate them from geopolitical tensions, and the creation of a cyber alert system based on the World Health Organization (WHO) to enhance crisis management.
At the same time, the private sector needs to engage in sharing information and employ an approach which will increase their overall cyber resilience in order to address the inadequacies of the framework.
— Read more in Global cyber governance: preparing for new business risks (Zurich, April 2015)

U.S. adopts a more assertive cyber defense posture

Published 29 April 2015

Earthquakes Israel worries about its own Big One

Published 29 April 2015

Nepal would have benefitted from a seismic early-warning system: Experts

Published 29 April 2015

As far back as the thirteenth century, Nepal experienced a major earthquake every seventy-five years or so, and just like the recent magnitude 7.8 quake, no one has been able to predict exactly when the next quake will strike. If forecasters are unable to anticipate quakes days or weeks ahead, then residents of earthquake prone areas may have to rely on early-warning systems which are able to provide a few seconds notice before an earthquake strikes. Earthquake early-warning systems have been deployed in a few seismic hot zones including Japan, Mexico, and California.

As far back as the thirteenth century, Nepal experienced a major earthquake every seventy-five years or so, and just like the recent magnitude 7.8 quake, no one has been able to predict exactly when the next quake will strike. “So far, the search for diagnostic precursors has been unsuccessful. Most geoscientists do not believe that there is a realistic prospect of accurate prediction in the foreseeable future, and the principal focus of research is on improving the forecasting of earthquakes,” according to the U.S. Geological Society (USGS).
Seismologists met in Nepal’s capital earlier this April, but were unable to predict that an earthquake would strike at the end of the month. Addressing an international conference on disaster risk reduction last month in Japan, Nepalese foreign minister Mahendra Bahadur Pandly, warned that a major earthquake in the Kathmandu valley would be devastating.
If forecasters are unable to anticipate quakes days or weeks ahead, then residents of earthquake prone areas may have to rely on early-warning systems which are able to provide a few seconds notice before an earthquake strikes.
Earthquake early-warning systems have been deployed in a few seismic hot zones including Japan, Mexico, and California. Japan’s early warning system has issued public alerts since 2007 to emergency and law enforcement agencies, some private industrial facilities, and public infrastructure projects. When the 2011 Tohoku quake struck, bullet trains, nuclear reactors, and critical factory operations shut down automatically.
During the 2014 Napa earthquake, California’s early warning system, dubbed ShakeAlert, gave the San Francisco Bay Area five to ten seconds notice before shaking began. “If Nepal had a seismic network that operated as the seismic stations in Northern California did in the Napa quake, people in Kathmandu would probably have had 15 to 20 seconds warning,” seismologist Peggy Hellweg, of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, told Newsweek.
ShakeAlert detects earthquakes using the California Integrated Seismic Network of roughly 400 ground motion sensors which identify primary waves (P-waves) as they move through the Earth at almost twice the speed of the earthquakes’ destructive S-waves, which shake the ground. Once P waves reach a seismic station, the information is transmitted via communications lines to labs, where computers calculate the origin and magnitude of the pending earthquake. Developers of ShakeAlert hope that in the near future, residents of California will receive earthquake warning alerts on their mobile phones and radio stations. California’s ShakeAlert is not yet available to the entire state or region (see “California exploring ways to fund ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system,” HSNW, 10 April 2015; and “Earthquake early-warning system to be deployed in Washington, Oregon,” HSNW, 13 February 2015).
The USGS estimated last year that it would cost $38.3 million to set up an early-warning system for the entire U.S. west coast, with annual maintenance and operations totaling $16.1 million.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Israel attacks in Syria, destroying Hezbollah-bound arms

Published 27 April 2015

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched two attacks on targets located inside Syria army bases – the first attacks took place on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, and the second wave of attacks took place the night between Friday and Saturday. The targets destroyed in the attacks were Iran-made long-range missiles which the Assad regime stored and maintained for Hezbollah, the Shi’a Lebanese militia. Since January 2013, the IAF conducted ten such attacks – the attacks Wednesday night and Friday night were attacks number nine and ten.

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched two attacks on targets located inside Syria army bases – the first attacks took place on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, and the second wave of attacks took place the night between yesterday (Friday) and today (Saturday).
Two Arab media outlets – Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya – report that the targets destroyed in the attacks were Iran-made long-range missiles which the Assad regime stores and maintains for Hezbollah, the Shi’a Lebanese militia.
SANA, Syria’s official news agency, did not acknowledge the attacks, but several pro-government outlets reported explosions near the town of Qateyfah.
In the first half-hour or so of the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the IAF destroyed nearly all of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. Iran has been arming Hezbollah with some of the most advanced weapon systems in the Iranian arsenal, but to make it less likely that Israel would attack and destroy these systems, Iran and the Assad regime – Hezbollah’s backers – have decided to store and maintain these systems on Syrian soil, on the assumption that Israel would be more reluctant to attack targets inside Syria than targets in Lebanon.
This post-2006 approach by Iran — keeping its more advanced military supplies to Hezbollah in Syrian military bases close to the Lebanese border — has largely worked. The exceptions have occurred when Iran or the Assad regime tried to take these systems out of storage and deliver them to Hezbollah. In at least some of the cases, the decision to take these advanced systems out of storage and put them on convoys to Lebanon was made when anti-regime rebel forces were gaining ground and closing in on the storage sites. Fearing that these systems would fall into rebels’ hands, Iran, on a few occasions, decided to move them across the border into Lebanon.
When Israeli intelligence spotted these convoys – or noticed preparations at the Syrian storage sites to load such convoys – the IAF was sent to destroy the convoy, the storage facility, or both.
Since January 2013, the IAF conducted ten such attacks – the attacks Wednesday night and Friday night were attacks number nine and ten. The previous attacks took place on 30 January 2013, 3 May 2013, 5 May 2013, 5 July 2013, 18 October 2013, 30 October 2013, 26 January 2014, and 24 February 2014.
All the attacks destroyed targets on Syrian soil, except the 24 February 2014 attack: A Syrian military convoy carrying Iranian arms to Hezbollah managed to cross into Lebanon under the cover of clouds and bad weather, so the IAF destroyed it on Lebanese soil.
The Israeli airstrikes have targeted four categories of armaments:

Advanced air defense systems such as the SA-17 batteries. Such systems were bombed in a convoy outside Damascus on 30 January 2013. If deployed in Lebanon, theses missile could erode Israel’s air superiority over Lebanon, where the Israel Air Force (IAF) now operates with impunity.
Longer and more accurate surface-to-surface missiles, including the Iranian-made Fateh-110s. Such systems were targeted in strikes on 3 and 5 May 2013 around Damascus. The missiles, with a range of 190 miles and accurate to within 200 yards, could threaten targets such as power plants deep inside Israel.
Long-range precision land-to-sea missiles such as the Russian-made Yakhont hypersonic anti-ship missiles. These systems were targeted by Israel at least four times — 5 May 2013, 5 July 2013, and 18 and 30 October 2013. The cruise missiles, flying several times faster than sound, would threaten Israeli ships and off-shore natural gas platforms.
Unconventional weapons such as chemical weapons, which Syria has agreed to surrender to the UN for destruction, and biological weapons. The 30 January 2013 strike on the SA-17 convoy also targeted a biological weapons research facility.

Al Jazeera reports that IAF jets launched missiles at bases of Syria’s 155th and 65th strategic missile brigades, stationed in Qalamoun, near the Syria-Lebanon border. Residents of nearby cities Yabroud and Qarah reported hearing a series of powerful explosions.
Haaretz reports that former Syrian opposition leader Hadi al-Bahra tweeted that the IAF also attacked the 92nd battalion, in addition to the attacks on the 155th and 65th brigades. The Syrian opposition keeps a close eye on the base of the 155th brigade, since it is responsible for launching Scud and Scud-B missiles against opposition forces in the area.
The IDF, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and the Ministry of Defense refused to comment on the attacks.
IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly reported Thursday that in 2013 or 2014, Hezbollah had constructed an airstrip in the Lebanon Beqaa Valley, which would allow the organization to launch its Iran-supplied unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The airstrip is located about ten kilometers from the city of Hermel, which is about eighteen kilometers from the Syrian border.
Hezbollah operates several Iranian-made UAVs, including the Ababil-3 — which has been employed over Syria by forces allied with the Syrian regime — and possibly the newer and larger Shahed-129.
Analysis
Israeli analysts point out that Iran’s nuclear program continues to be a major preoccupation of Israel, but the agreement which is likely to be signed by the end of June between the P5+1 group and Iran would make it unlikely that Israel would launch a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Moreover, any agreement between the P5+1 and Iran – that is, if Iran does not cheat, and if any indication of cheating is met with a firm international response — would freeze some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program for 10-15 years, while keeping the entire program under a most intrusive inspection and monitoring for twenty-five years (again: if the Iranians live up to the letter and spirit of the agreement and if the P5+1 are determined to hold Iran to its word).
Israel has thus been turning its attention to more immediate threats, chief among them Hezbollah. In the summer of 2006, when the war between Israel and Hezbollah erupted, the Shi’a organization had about 20,000 rockets and missiles in its arsenal. It now has about 120,000.
Moreover, many of the missiles Hezbollah now has have longer range, heavier payload, and are much more accurate than the missile the organization had nine years ago. The damage these weapons can inflict on Israel’s infrastructure and urban centers would be considerable.
The sheer number of missile Hezbollah has also means that Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome defense system would be far less effective than it was during the summer 2014 was with Hamas.
In addition, learning from its mistakes in 2006, the organization has dispersed its weapons among the Shi’a population in southern and eastern Lebanon. Any military campaign by Israel to minimize the damage to Israel’s infrastructure and urban centers by hunting down and destroying Hezbollah’s weapon systems would thus require Israel to inflict destruction on Lebanese Shi’a towns and villages on a scale which would dwarf the destruction Israel inflicted on the Gaza Strip during last summer’s war with Hamas.
Another issue Israel faces is that there is an inverse correlation between how secure the Assad regime is, and how eager are the Iranians to take their advanced systems out of storage in Syria and move them to Lebanon. The more secure Assad is, the more comfortable Iran is keeping its Hezbollah-bound arms in Syrian storage. The more insecure Assad is, the less comfortable Iran is keeping these systems on Syrian soil, where they might be taken over by the anti-Assad rebels.
In the last few weeks, despite Iran’s continued massive support, the Assad regime forces have lost important ground:

ISIS and al-Nusra forces, for a few days, took over the large Palestinian refugee camp at Yarmouk, near Damascus
Pitched battles between the rebels and the Syrian army have again erupted in the Qalamoun Mountains near the Lebanese border – an area of strategic importance, which the regime believed it had secured last year. The forces controlling the area have an effective control of important sections of the Syria-Lebanon border.
Rebel forces have, on several occasions, bombarded Damascus International Airport
In the past two days rebel forces captured the northwestern Syrian city of Jisr al-Shughour for the first time since 2011. The city, on a road between the coastal city of Latakia and the city of Aleppo, is now fully controlled by rebels. Reports from the field note that after capturing the city, the rebels are continuing their assault, aiming to push the Syrian army from the few remaining government-controlled areas in the province of Idlib. Military analysts note that by taking Jisr al-Shughour, the rebels are now closer to the coastal province of Latakia, President Bashar al-Assad’s stronghold, and are now less than five miles from several villages and towns loyal to the government near the coast.

Despite persistent questions, support for use of drones against terrorists remains strong

Published 27 April 2015

The CIA counterterrorism program which captured, interrogated, and tortured al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons was criticized by lawmakers, including Senate Democrats who questioned the secrecy of the program. Many of those same lawmakers overwhelmingly support CIA targeted drone missions aimed at killing terror suspects and militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia.
When Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) was asked in a 2013 meeting with reporters why she was confident the CIA provided her with truthful information about the drone program, when she had already accused the agency of lying to her about its torture program, the former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, “That’s a good question, actually,” but did nit elaborate.
About once a month, staff members of the congressional intelligence committees meet with CIA officials at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia to watch footage of drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries. The staffers do not read the classified CIA cables discussing the strikes and their aftermath, but the screenings have made up a large part of the congressional “oversight” lawmakers claim they have over the CIA’s drone program.
It is this claimed oversight and the success of the program in killing foreign terror suspects that will ensure drone strikes remain a part of American warfare and unlikely to change significantly despite President Barack Obama’s announcement last Thursday that a January drone strike in Pakistan accidentally killed two al-Qaeda hostages, an American aid worker and an Italian.
TheNew York Times reports that the CIA’s drone program, championed by the White House, is largely operated and or influenced by the same CIA officers who led the agency’s torture program. According to the Times, “perhaps no single CIA officer has been more central to the effort than Michael D’Andrea…who was chief of operations during the birth of the agency’s detention and interrogation program and then, as head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, became an architect of the targeted killing program.”
Until March, when D’Andrea was shifted to another role, he presided over the development of CIA drone operations and hundreds of strikes in Pakistan and Yemen during his nine-year tenure. D’Andrea has been a forceful advocate for the drone program and was particularly effective in winning the support of Feinstein, to the point that she rejected criticism of the program from some Democrats and human rights groups. In 2013 she said that CIA officials had assured her that hardly any civilian deaths occur under its drone strikes. “The figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes each year has typically been in the single digits,” she said.
While the agency has killed hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives, the CIA has never provided detailed count or explanation of the many attacks witnesses say killed women and children. In 2013 Obama and the White House pledged to make the CIA drone program more transparent by shifting the bulk of drone operations from the CIA to the Pentagon, but intelligence committees, influenced by D’Andrea and top CIA officials’ claim that the CIA strikes are more precise than those conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, have resisted the White House’s plans.
The deaths of two hostages by a January CIA drone strike brings raises questions about how difficult it is for the CIA to know exactly who it is killing with drones. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), who heads the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said last week’s revelations about the hostages’ death “will renew this discussion with the administration, within Congress, as to who actually should be running the drone operation.”
Asked whether the CIA should be running the program, McCain said, “I do not think so.”
“That’s why they’re called the intelligence agency and why we call the armed forces, obviously, the people that are supposed to be carrying out military operations,” McCain told CNN’s State of the Union. “I can understand when it was a very small operation why it would be done by the intelligence agency, such as U-2s and other reconnaissance aircraft, for many years.”
“Now it’s reached the point where it’s an integral part of the conflict and a very essential one, so I think it should be conducted and oversight and administered by the Department of Defense,” he said.

Efforts to improve cyber information sharing between the private sector, government

Published 27 April 2015

Lately, Obama administration officials having been venturing West to encourage tech firms to support the government’s efforts to improve cyber information sharing between the private sector and government agencies. The House of Representatives last week passed two bills to advance such effort. The Protecting Cyber Networks Act and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015 authorize private firms to share threat data such as malware signatures, Internet protocol addresses, and domain names with other companies and the federal government. To the liking of the private sector, both bills offer companies liability protection for participating in cyberthreat information sharing and they contain provisions that permit government agencies to share data with each other but not with the National Security Agency (NSA) or the Pentagon.
At a meeting during last week’s RSA Conference, White House cybersecurity czar Michael Daniel speaking on a panel with Amit Yoran, president of the security firm RSA, told attendees that recent major breaches on companies such as Sony Pictures and health insurer Anthem, have made information sharing a national priority for President Barack Obama. “Increasing the amount of information flow between the government and the private sector, and between companies in the private sector, is a critical foundational element,” said Daniel at the event hosted by security company Invincea and Passcode. “It’s a necessary … component of getting better at confronting the cyberthreat.” The proposed House bills are a step forward in a bipartisan effort to protect the country’s computer networks and consumer data, Daniel said.
According to theChristian Science Monitor, tech firms and the cybersecurity industry are skeptical about the government’s proposals on information sharing. Some argue that such formal arrangements are unnecessary considering the sharing that already goes on within the industry. Others are still concerned that consumer information will somehow get in the hands of the NSA, despite the provisions in the House bills. Some tech and cybersecurity firms simply do not believe that they will get useful information back from the government in exchange for the information they provide. Yoran congratulated the government, saying its efforts were a “net positive step in the right direction,” but “I don’t think security breaches are stoppable in the current computing paradigm.”
The government is committed to understanding the needs of the private tech sector and recently announced the opening of permanent outposts in Silicon Valley. Both the Pentagon and DHS will soon open offices in the area, but how far these efforts will convince the tech industry to cooperate is yet to be seen. The House bills will have to be consolidated and sent to the Senate as a single bill, and even if it passes, the private sector will remain skeptical about its effectiveness. One concern among tech firms is that if a company knows about a potential threat and fails to act fast enough, will it find itself in a legal fight over a data breach? In addition, will cybersecurity firms lose their advantage when they share their own intelligence about cyberthreats with the government? Will their competitors receive that same intelligence via information sharing?
“We’re not looking to cannibalize that, put anyone out of business, or compete,” Phyllis Schneck, DHS top cybersecurity official, said at last week’s event. “We want you to grow, we want you to make a lot of money because more money leads to more innovation.”
Cybersecurity industry analysts say the success of the government’s efforts on data sharing will largely depend on whether Section 215 of the U.S.A Patriot Act, which permits law enforcement and intelligence agencies to collect certain customers’ records from U.S. businesses including communications and credit card firms, will be reauthorized when it expires on 1 June. The upcoming debate on reauthorization will further fuel privacy concerns in the tech sector.

New MIT report details benefits of investment in basic research

By Abby Abazorius

Published 27 April 2015

In 2014, European researchers discovered a fundamental new particle which sheds light on the origins of the universe; the European Space Agency successfully landed the first spacecraft on a comet; and Chinese researchers developed the world’s fastest supercomputer. As these competitors increase their investment in basic research, the percentage of the U.S. federal budget devoted to research and development has fallen from around 10 percent in 1968 to less than 4 percent in 2015. A new report by MIT researchers examines how funding cutbacks will affect the future of scientific studies in the United States. The report also highlights opportunities in basic research which could help shape and maintain U.S. economic power, and benefit society.

Last year was a notable one for scientific achievements: In 2014, European researchers discovered a fundamental new particle that sheds light on the origins of the universe, and the European Space Agency successfully landed the first spacecraft on a comet. Chinese researchers, meanwhile, developed the world’s fastest supercomputer, and uncovered new ways to meet global food demand.
But as these competitors increase their investment in basic research, the percentage of the U.S. federal budget devoted to research and development has fallen from around 10 percent in 1968 to less than 4 percent in 2015.
Yesterday MIT released a report in which faculty and other researchers detail specific impacts, within their fields, of this declining federal investment in basic research. The report — The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit — was prepared by a committee of MIT researchers and research administrators. Examining how funding cutbacks will affect the future of scientific studies in the United States, the report highlights opportunities in basic research that could help shape and maintain U.S. economic power, and benefit society.
The report was publicly unveiled during an event in Washington sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the Science Coalition, and MIT.
Marc Kastner, the Donner Professor of Physics at MIT and president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, says that the report looks at challenges facing the United States and the world in a variety of fields — from cybersecurity and robotics to plant biology and infectious diseases — and details the potential benefits, in each, of increased U.S. federal government support for basic research.
“Although the benefit of any particular scientific endeavor is unpredictable, there is no doubt that investing in basic research has always paid off over time,” Kastner says. “Economists tell us that past investments in research and development account for a large fraction of our current GDP, and even if the future payoffs are not as large, there is no doubt that we will suffer if we do not keep up with those nations that are now making bigger investments than we are.”
In “The Future Postponed,” MIT researchers discuss fifteen discrete areas in which government support is needed, highlighting potential opportunities within these fields. For example, the report cites the need to expand research in neurobiology, brain chemistry, and the science of aging to develop new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
“The comparison between Alzheimer’s disease and cancer is sobering,” explains Andrew Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “Between January 2012 and March 2015, the [Food and Drug Administration] approved twenty-seven new cancer drugs, two of which target breast cancer, an affliction that affects 2.9 million women in the United States. In contrast, no new Alzheimer’s drugs have been approved in more than a decade, despite the fact that more than five million Americans suffer from this disease.”
Chris Kaiser, the Amgen Professor in MIT’s Department of Biology, highlights the importance of expanding university-based research into new types of antibiotics to tackle the growing health threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria — an area where commercial incentives to invest are lacking. He also notes that funding is needed to investigate the molecular mechanisms and structure of specific viruses in order to develop effective vaccines and drugs to prepare for future viral epidemics.
Ron Weiss, an associate professor of biological engineering and electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and research associate Jonathan Babb argue that synthetic biology research could lead to customized treatments for genetic diseases, engineered viruses that can identify and kill cancer cells, or climate-friendly fuels — but a lack of investment in laboratory facilities is leading to a migration of top talent and research leadership overseas.
The report’s authors also cite expectations that global population will grow from seven billion to nine billion by 2040, while a lack of arable land will necessitate a 50 percent increase in the efficiency of food production. While innovations in plant science will be necessary to meet global food requirements and address malnutrition, Mary Gehring, an assistant professor of biology at MIT, writes that U.S. investment in basic plant-related research and development is far below that of many other scientific disciplines, despite the fact that agriculture is responsible for more than two million U.S. jobs, and is a major source of export earnings.
Another case study examines cyberattacks, which Howard Shrobe, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), explains are not only a nuisance, but also pose a threat to national security. Shrobe notes that investment is needed to support the redesign of computer systems to eliminate major security weakness in areas such as computer architecture and access authorization.
Additionally, the report’s authors emphasize that the U.S. has an opportunity to take a global leadership role in areas including fusion energy research, robotics, and quantum information technologies.
Kastner explains the importance of supporting basic research by noting that such research endeavors often bring about unexpected, life-changing results — as in the case of the basic research in science and math that led to the development of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI: “With complete unpredictability, basic science research sometimes gives us a gift of new technology that changes our world,” he says.
— Read more in The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit (MIT, April 2015)
This story is reprinted with permission of MIT News