Politics

691 articles on Politics

• Ford's 'Sync' Driving Data to Provide Insurance Discounts
  State Farm is expanding its Drive Safe and Save usage-based insurance program to include cars equipped with Ford¿s Sync telematics system. Also known as ¿pay as you go,¿ usage-based insurance programs look at how many miles drivers put on their cars and calculate premiums accordingly.
  05.31.12

• New Stealth Sub Is Fully Networked, But Cut Off From the Outside World
  Bandwidth on U.S. Navy submarines is practically a throwback to the era of Magic cards, Discmans, and the best Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episodes. To send and receive messages, the U.S. submarine fleet needs to rise to a depth shallow enough to raise periscopes and antennas. Aboard the USS Mississippi -- the Navy's newest sub, which gave Wired a four-day ride -- periscope depth is 60 feet. While there are exceptions to that rule, it sets up a basic tradeoff. To remain undetected and ready to complete their missions, submarine commanders have to be prepared for long periods of silence.
  05.31.12

• Romney's 'Amercia' and 7 More Political Gaffes Rooted in Technology
  Technology can get the better of all of us. For politicians, the screw-ups are magnified by their public persona. Also, they should stop sending naked photos of themselves.
  05.30.12

• Exclusive Pictures: Inside the Navy's Newest Spy Sub
  The Navy's newest fast-attack submarine is loaded with advanced sonar and radar-blocking tools, a special bay to take SEAL commandos stealthily to their secret missions, and 16 launch tubes for torpedoes and submarines. Its dives down to 550 feet below the surface are stunningly smooth. And as Wired learned during four days underway on the USS Mississippi, it even plays with dolphins.
  05.30.12

• Mexican Cartel Declares War on Cheetos
  Arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary of PepsiCo might be the first time Mexico's drug cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.
  05.29.12

• This Rock Could Spy on You for Decades
  America is supposed to wind down its war in Afghanistan by 2014. But U.S. forces may continue to track Afghans for years after the conflict is officially done. Palm-sized sensors, developed for the American military, will remain littered across the Afghan countryside -- detecting anyone who moves nearby and reporting their locations back to a remote headquarters.
  05.29.12

• A Capsule With a View
  Ad Astra Kristian von Bengtson
  05.27.12

• Senate Panel Cuts Off Navy's Biofuel Buys
  The Navy's ambitious renewable energy plans aren't sunk quite yet. But they took a major hit Thursday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to all-but-ban the military from buying alternative fuels.
  05.24.12

• Food Fight: Contractor Accused of $750 Million Overcharge for Wartime Grub
  In 2008, the Pentagon began investigating whether the main supplier of food to troops in Afghanistan overcharged taxpayers. Now lawmakers are squeezing both the Pentagon and the contractor.
  05.24.12

• In First, Navy Will Put 4G Network on Ships
  Bandwidth on Navy ships is a scarce, expensive commodity. For sailors using non-essential systems, like recreational computers? Dial-up speeds -- if they're lucky. But by the end of the year, for the first time, the Navy will put a 4G LTE wireless network aboard some of its ships, giving a whole new communications tool to sailors and Marines: their smartphones.
  05.23.12

• IBM Outlaws Siri, Worried She Has Loose Lips
  If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone's voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn't welcome on Big Blue's networks.
  05.22.12

• Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight
  Northrop Grumman has finally penciled in the first flight of the giant surveillance airship it's building for the U.S. Army. The football-field-size, helium-filled robot blimp should take to the air over Lakehurst, New Jersey the first or second week of June.
  05.22.12

• Darpa, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering
  The military-industrial complex just got a little bit livelier. Quite literally. That's because Darpa, the Pentagon's far-out research arm, has kicked off a program designed to take the conventions of manufacturing and apply them to living cells. Think of it like an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter -- man-made organisms -- instead of cars or computer parts.
  05.22.12

• El-P Blasts Drone-Filled Dystopia on Cancer for Cure
  Drones overhead and smartphones in hand, we drift through panoptic lives and push-button wars. It sometimes feels like most songwriters couldn't give a crap, but not hip-hop visionary El-P: He's still raging with feeling against the machine, from within the increasingly dense machine music he painstakingly crafts. The Brooklyn rapper's latest round of literate but inflammatory blasts comes on arresting new record Cancer for Cure.
  05.22.12

• Leaked Memo: Afghan 'Burn Pit' Could Wreck Troops' Hearts, Lungs
  For years, U.S. government agencies have told the public, veterans and Congress that they couldn't draw any connections between the so-called "burn pits" disposing of trash at the military's biggest bases and veterans' respiratory or cardiopulmonary problems. But a 2011 Army memo obtained by Danger Room flat-out stated that the burn pit at one of Afghanistan's largest bases poses "long-term adverse health conditions" to troops breathing the air there.
  05.22.12

• High Court to Hear Warrantless Eavesdropping Challenge
  The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether to halt a legal challenge to a once-secret warrantless surveillance program targeting Americans' communications that Congress eventually legalized in 2008. The announcement is a win for the Obama administration, which like its predecessor, argues that government wiretapping programs and laws can't be challenged in court.
  05.21.12

• 5 Nuclear Sites That Could Launch War With Iran
  This week, the U.S. and its allies will sit down with some of their arch-nemeses: the Iranians. Big, unresolved questions persist about Iran's nuclear program, which Iran swears exists just to produce peaceful nuclear energy. In particular, those questions primarily concern five installations that concern the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world's nuclear watchdog. And unless you're a nuclear wonk, you probably don't understand them. Here's a crib sheet.
  05.21.12

• Twitter Improves Privacy Options, Now Supports 'Do Not Track'
  Like most social sites, Twitter tracks your every move around the web. Now, however, the company has joined a growing number of websites that support the "Do Not Track" standard, offering users a way to opt out of the tracking.
  05.18.12

• Cell Doors 'Incapable of Locking' at Giant Afghan Jail
  The detention facility that the U.S. built in Afghanistan is state-of-the-art. Except for all the faulty hinges on the cell doors. Or the locks that are, in the words of a new report from the Defense Department's inspector general, "incapable of locking either manually or electronically." Or the construction that's deemed "not up to the standard suitable for a detention facility." The worst part? U.S. military commanders have known about these flaws since the prison opened its doors.
  05.17.12

• Face Down, Cash Up, Then Pakistan Lets in Our Trucks
  Washington believes it has a deal, finally, to reopen Pakistan's resupply routes for the Afghanistan war, saving a bunch of cash. But not before its Pakistani frenemies drive the price up. Pakistan wants a $5,000 fee on every shipping container that passes through what NATO calls the Ground Lines of Communication, or GLOCs, on its ...
  05.17.12

• Your First Class Seat For Space
  Today was a magic day! Finally the seat for space capsule Tycho Deep Space arrived. This final coating layer of leather and super fancy detailing was done by Krumnaalen and they have done an amazing job!!! So, thank you so much for this work. Please find all blogs related to the development of this seat if you ...
  05.17.12

• Step 1 in U.S. Plan to Rule Sea and Sky: Actually Share Data
  No one really understands the Navy and Air Force's new blueprint for dominating Earth's seas and skies. But what's increasingly clear, even to the heads of both the Navy and Air Force, is that there's a big challenge ahead for it, one that doesn't have anything to do with an adversary like China: getting U.S. ships, subs, planes and drones to actually talk to one another.
  05.16.12

• How Plants Deal With Space Travel
  Over the past few billion years, life has undergone stark transformations, from isolated organisms to collections of cells to inventive machines able to grow with sunlight to larger creatures that swim, crawl, and hop across the planet¿s surface.  Along the way, increasingly pervasive organisms encountered a range of environments that challenged genetic codes to solve ...
  05.16.12

• Why the World Isn't Freaking Out About Iran's Plasma-Powered Spy Sat
  Next Wednesday, Iran will try to launch an experimental reconnaissance satellite into orbit -- just as international negotiators gather in Baghdad for talks about Tehran's nuclear program. The timing couldn't be more inflammatory, and rogue state satellite launches are usually considered to be missile tests in drag. So why isn't the world throwing itself into a tizzy about the mission?
  05.16.12

• Defense Chief Restricts Stealth Jet Till It Stops Choking Pilots
  For five years, America's most expensive fighter jets have been poisoning their pilots and crew. On Tuesday, the Defense Secretary finally stepped in -- restricting the flights of the F-22 Raptor, and ordering the Air Force to begin an "expedited installation" of an automatic backup oxygen system for the entire fleet of Raptors, Pentagon spokesman George Little tells reporters. But Panetta is allowing the stealthy dogfighter to keep flying -- for now.
  05.15.12

• Another Afghanistan Commander Bails on the War Early
  Afghanistan war commanders have tenures as long as Spinal Tap drummers. Army Gen. David McKiernan got fired in 2009. His replacement, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, resigned the next year. Now the current commander, Marine Gen. John Allen, may be out the door as well, more than a year early. If Washington Post ace Greg Jaffe is ...
  05.15.12

• Pakistan Shuts Its Border; Pentagon Shuts Its Mouth
  For nearly six months, Pakistan has closed its ground shipping routes to convoys resupplying the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Getting those resupply routes open is preoccupying U.S. military officers and diplomats as they haggle, sweet-talk, beg and cajole their Pakistani counterparts, since alternative shipping routes are vastly more expensive. Exactly how expensive, the Pentagon won't ...
  05.15.12