The University of Adelaide has a free new MOOC called Cyberwar, Surveillance and Security that is taught by Melissa de Zwart, Dale Stephens, and Rebecca LaForgia. The web page and registration can be found here. And here is a teaser introduction to the MOOC, which contains brief statements from some of the experts who participate, including Mike Schmitt, Renn Gade, Jonathan Zittrain, Ben Wizner, Bruce Schneier, and yours truly. It looks like a great introduction to the topic.
When World War II ended 70 years ago, much of the world – including industrialized Europe, Japan, and other countries that had been occupied – was left geopolitically riven and burdened by heavy sovereign debt, with many major economies in ruins. One might have expected a long period of limited international cooperation, slow growth, high unemployment, and extreme privation, owing to countries’ limited capacity to finance their huge investment needs. But that is not what happened.
Over the course of the next year, you’re going to hear plenty of theories as to what guarantees victory in a president election. For example, there’s the matter of candidates’ height — the premise being that the taller contender always wins. A few years ago, researchers at Texas Tech took a look at this and decided there was something to it — something having to do with voters and their primordial instincts.
Here’s something a little outside the normal Lawfare fare but which Lawfare readers might find interesting: A new paper we have written about all the privacy benefits we receive from technologies we typically think of as privacy eroding. When confronted with technologies that give us new privacy with one hand and erode privacy with the other, we tend to pocket the gains without thinking about them while worrying endlessly about the erosions.
Saudi King Salman's decision to skip President Obama’s Camp David summit last week with leaders of the six Arab states that compose the Gulf Cooperation Council delivered a diplomatic rebuke. It broadcast skepticism on the part of Saudi Arabia—by far the largest and most powerful member of the GCC—of Obama’s assurances that U.S.-led negotiations won’t pave the way for their archenemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to complete its decades-long quest to acquire nuclear weapons.
What happens when the public does not wish to live out the utopian dreams of its elite leaders? Usually, the answer for those leaders is to seek more coercion and less liberty to force people to think progressively. Here at home, President Barack Obama came into power in 2009 with a Democratic Congress, a sympathetic press, and allies in Hollywood, academia, unions, and philanthropic and activist foundations.
For more than a quarter century after World War II, the "California Dream" was real. California was the Promised Land to millions of middle-income households who moved here from all over the country. They were attracted by unmatched weather.
In a previous RealClearMarketscolumn, I explored the causes and consequences of California's ongoing housing affordability crisis. In a state where the average house price and monthly rental price hovers almost 2½ and 1½ times, respectively, above the national averages, it is clear that for far too many, homeownership isn't an option and renting is just as much of a strain on household budgets.
Throughout its “war on terrorism,” the United States has had to rely on Pakistan. Though Washington may occasionally have believed its trust was abused, the Pentagon’s need for overflight rights or landing bases, crucial for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, trumped diplomatic niceties.
interview with Samuel Tadrosvia U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Samuel Tadros, a contributor to the Hoover Institution's Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order, testified concerning the state of Egypt, two years after Morsi.
Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor and a key adviser to former Chairman Ben S. Bernanke during the financial crisis, has some theories about why that is. Warsh is fresh off a review of the Bank of England's transparency commissioned by Governor Mark Carney. That experience gave him some insights into how the two central banks are similar and different.
“I think your city looks like pre-revolutionary France,” Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen told me. Whalen wasn’t talking about street people tearing down Ess Eff edifices. He was talking about housing during a conference call to roll out Hoover’s Golden State Poll on housing in California. The crux of the poll: The California Dream has taken a big hit.
A Greek exit from the Eurozone would have catastrophic consequences, according to speakers gathered at an emergency economics summit in Athens on Tuesday. While divided in their views about what should be done to solve the crisis — which has now really reached make or break time — the invitees were united in their certainty that a "Grexit" must not be allowed to take place.
Growing nationalist rhetoric amid Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula last year and a diplomatic standoff with the West have raised fears of pressure on prominent academics and experts critical of official policy. Sonin will take up a position as a professor at the prestigious University of Chicago from September where he will work alongside internationally renowned economists, he wrote on his blog. "Russia's loss, Chicago's gain," former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted Wednesday.
Pressing to send a new wave of U.S. combat troops into Iraq would have amounted to political suicide for White House hopefuls just a few years ago. But the shocking advances of ISIS over the past year -- from the gruesome beheadings of Americans to the group's success in conquering key Iraqi cities like Ramadi -- are creating a new uncertainty about whether the U.S. should re-engage in Iraq, thrusting the issue to the fore of the 2016 presidential race.
As detailed in a new report from the Hoover Institution, California is in the midst of a full-on crisis when it comes to the cost of housing. The average home in the state costs $437,000 – about two and a half times the national average. Renting is no panacea, either. At about $1,240 a month, the average California rental runs 50 percent higher than the national mean.
