Society
Under Trump, US Cyberdefense Loses Its Head
When I walk into Jen Easterly’s office on a bright January day in Arlington, Virginia, I’m greeted by a giant shark head lurking on the floor. I instantly spot a Rubik’s Cube—an Easterly hallmark—emblazoned with the logo of the organization she’s run for the past three and a half years—the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,…
Read MorePsychology Can Be Harnessed to Combat Violent Extremism
This prediction is based on several decades of research that my colleagues and I have been undertaking at the University of Oxford to establish what makes people willing to fight and die for their groups. We use a variety of methods, including interviews, surveys, and psychological experiments to collect data from a wide range of…
Read MoreElon Musk Plays DOGE Ball—and Hits America’s Geek Squad
Addressing a single executive order from Donald Trump’s voluminous first-day edicts is like singling out one bullet in a burst from an AK-47. But one of them hit me in the gut. That is “Establishing and Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency.’’ The acronym for that name is DOGE (named after a memecoin), and…
Read MoreWhat Flat-Earthers (and other conspiracy theories) Tell Us About Modern Society
When you hear that people believe the world’s flat, your first thought might be, “Why on earth (pun intended) would anyone believe this?” To answer this, you need to answer a much more fundamental and deeper question…. Why do you believe the world is round? While this might seem like a trick question or play…
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