Politics

703 articles on Politics

• White House: We're Really, Really Ending The Iraq War
  11.30.11

• The Marines' New Target Dummies Ride Segways
  For years, military live fire exercises have relied on targets that just sit there, waiting to be shot. These targets, newly developed for the U.S. Marine Corps don't; they move, behave, and react just like real combatants. Combatants who ride Segway scooters.
  11.30.11

• Now Might Not Be the Best Time to Hire Pakistani Mercs
  The State Department wants to hire Pakistani security guards to protect its diplomats. Yes, now. Right after a U.S. military accident killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and stoked a new wave of anti-Americanism.
  11.30.11

• Universal Guide For Going Into Space
  Kristian von Bengston, a do-it-yourself space architect and Rocket Shop blogger at Wired Science, shares his flowchart for leaving the Earth.
  11.29.11

• Obama Orders Government to Clean Up Terror Training
  The White House quietly ordered a widespread review of government counterterrorism training materials last month, following Danger Room's reports that officials at the FBI, military and Justice Department taught their colleagues that "mainstream" Muslims embrace violence and compared the Islamic religion to the Death Star.
  11.29.11

• Putting Scientists on Mars in Permanent Colonies
  Physicist Paul Davies explains that traveling to and subsisting on the Red Planet isn't the hard part—it's getting people home.
  11.29.11

• Process: Turning Russian Missiles Into U.S. Nuke Fuel
  By 2013, the equivalent of 20,000 Soviet missiles will have been repurposed to light the same US homes they were built to annihilate.
  11.29.11

• Hero Marine Sues Defense Giant After Sniper Scope Fight
  Defense contractor BAE Systems hired Sgt. Dakota Meyer, in part because he was one of America's most decorated war heroes. But when he called BS on the company's proposed sales of high-tech sniper scopes to Pakistan, a new lawsuit alleges, BAE executives started calling Meyer "mentally unstable" and a drunk.
  11.29.11

• Air Force Tells Reporters: You're Not Welcome at Our Drone Base Anymore
  When the Air Force activated its first unmanned aircraft wing in 2007, the military invited journalists out to Creech Air Force Base in Nevada to come take a look at the robotic future taking off. Today, that kind of openness would be unthinkable. In the last six months, the Air Force has turned down every media request to visit U.S. drone pilots. Which means the public knows less and less about the signature weapon in the U.S. military -- and the people who operate them.
  11.29.11

• Feds Withholding Evidence Favorable to Bradley Manning, Lawyer Charges
  A recent court filing by the civilian lawyer defending Bradley Manning, provides hints of the aggressive defense the attorney is mounting for his client at a hearing next month.
  11.28.11

• What Crisis? U.S. Drones, Jets Still Fly Over Pakistan
  Pakistan is majorly angry with the U.S. for a disastrous military accident that killed 24 of its soldiers. It's even ordered the U.S. out of a key Pakistani airbase used for the drone war. But, tellingly, it's not denying the U.S. the use of its airspace, according to the Pentagon. And that means that as bad as the incident is, it's not going to ground the drones.
  11.28.11

• Technology Once Protected Our Privacy, Now It Erodes It
  In light of the erosion of privacy online, we need to be careful to protect our privacy at home, according to Michael Birnhack, law professor at Tel Aviv University, speaking at Intelligence Squared's If conference. In direct contrast to Martin Blinder's argument in favour of personal analytics, Birnhack said: "Yes we can measure stuff, but do we want to measure ...
  11.28.11

• It's a Drone's World. We Just Live in It
  The most advanced unmanned aircraft from around the planet.
  11.28.11

• The Worst War Movies Ever, From Delta Force to The Empire Strikes Back
  Here they are: the corniest, most inaccurate, jingoistic, inadvertently hilarious battles ever to be waged on the silver screen. Warning: several are NSFW, and all of them are full-blown assaults on good taste.
  11.25.11

• 9 Reasons Wired Readers Should Wear Tinfoil Hats
  There's plenty of reason to be concerned Big Brother is watching. We're paranoid not because we have grandiose notions of our self-importance, but because the facts speak for themselves. Here's our short list of nine reasons that Wired readers ought to wear tinfoil hats, or at least, fight for their rights and consider ways to protect themselves ...
  11.24.11

• Mobile 'Rootkit' Maker Apologizes to Critical Android Dev It Tried to Silence
  A mobile data-logging software maker apologized Wednesday to an Android developer who the company had earlier insisted apologize for his critical research. Carrier IQ was virtually unknown until the 25-year-old Trevor Eckhart of Connecticut analyzed the workings of its software, recently revealing that the software secretly chronicles a user's phone experience, from its apps, battery life ...
  11.23.11

• Exclusive Video: Protesters in Cairo Fight Back
  Once again, Egypt is in flames. In this exclusive footage, you can see protesters hurling Molotov cocktails, as the police call in the gas grenades.
  11.23.11

• The Pest Who Shames Companies Into Fixing Security Flaws
  Technologist Christopher Soghoian likes to reveal the security flaws of large entities, highlighting transgressions he sees as unacceptable violations of privacy.
  11.23.11

• Breaking: The GOP's National Security Debate Sucked
  Judging from Tuesday night's Republican debate on national security, the 2012 presidential candidates don't really think defense is a big issue in the upcoming election. The major candidates don't like President Obama; they like the military; and they're wary about withdrawing from Afghanistan. Not a lot of surprises there. In fact, the debate occasionally sidetracked ...
  11.22.11

• Mobile 'Rootkit' Maker Tries to Silence Critical Android Dev
  An android developer and the maker of a mobile-phone data-logging company are at legal odds over the dev's critical research about Carrier IQ, which is demanding Trevor Eckhart publicly apologize for his research, and remove the company's training manuals from his website. The brouhaha intertwines the First Amendment, defamation and copyright to the backdrop of logging software secretly installed on an untold number of Android phones -- software that knows much about users' behaviors from whom you've texted to where you have dropped calls.
  11.22.11

• Bradley Manning Defense to Call 50 Witnesses to Hearing
  The defense attorney representing alleged leaker Bradley Manning plans to call up to 50 witnesses at a pre-trial hearing scheduled to occur next month in Maryland as well as introduce a number of motions.
  11.22.11

• Pentagon's War on Drugs Goes Mercenary
  An obscure Pentagon agency intended to fight illicit drugs has quietly become one of the biggest sources of federal money for private security contractors. Over $3 billion in an upcoming contract will go to everything from training Mexican helicopter pilots to mentoring Azeri naval commandos to designing websites for the Pakistani government. Introducing the Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office, the epicenter of an outsourced global fight against nearly anything the office wants fought.
  11.22.11

• Darpa's New Tool for Diagnosing Disease? Semen
  Imagine if giving docs a single drop of semen was all it took to keep you healthy. In a solicitation released last week, Darpa, the Pentagon's far-out research agency, is asking for technology that'd replace good old diagnostic standbys -- a vial of blood or cup of urine, for example -- with "a portable format" that's about the size and weight of a credit card.
  11.21.11

• Fight To Stop 'Automatic' Defense Cuts Starts In 5... 4...
  Updated 4:55 p.m. and again at 7:05 p.m. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's apocalypse is now. A congressional "super-committee" designed to cut the deficit has announced its failure. The embittered legislators reluctantly added that their failure triggers over $600 billion in mandated, automatic defense cuts over the next decades. Panetta will pour himself a stiff drink. And ...
  11.21.11

• Army Sets December Court Date for Alleged Leaker Bradley Manning
  The former Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking classified and sensitive documents to WikiLeaks will finally get a public hearing next month, more than 18 months after he was first arrested.
  11.21.11

• Darpa: Do Away With Antibiotics, Then Destroy All Pathogens
  Last year, federal officials warned that Americans were on the verge of "a post-antibiotic era." And that's exactly what the Pentagon's far-out research agency is after. As long as they've got a replacement at the ready. Darpa is making a long-shot request for an all-out replacement to antibiotics, the decades-old standard for killing or injuring bacteria to demolish a disease.
  11.21.11

• Congress Looking to Declare Pizza Is a Vegetable for School Lunches
  The U.S. Congress is looking to vote on an appropriations bill that, among other things, will revise the guidelines set for federally-funded school lunch programs. In a move eerily similar to the "ketchup is a vegetable" rules in the '80s, the new guidelines will allow frozen pizzas to be classified as a vegetable when determining ...
  11.18.11