News & Resources

The legal status of cannabis in the United States has undergone one of the most dramatic policy reversals in modern American history. A plant that was classified alongside heroin as a Schedule I substance — officially deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high...

Power grid vulnerabilities are finally garnering some attention by government officials. An electrical grid joint drill simulation is being planned in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Thousands of utility workers, FBI agents, anti-terrorism experts, governmental...

In the ruins of Tel Hazor, an ancient Canaanite city in northern Israel, archaeologists uncovered something that had no obvious reason to be there: the paws and inscribed base of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian sphinx bearing the name of Pharaoh Mycerinus, the ruler who...

The question of who was responsible for chemical weapons attacks during the Syrian civil war remains one of the most contested intelligence disputes of the 21st century. From the first allegations in 2013 through subsequent incidents, the official narratives presented...

Few images capture the contradictions of American foreign policy more starkly than a senior U.S. official dining warmly with a foreign leader who would later be characterized as a monster deserving of military intervention. The arc of John Kerry’s relationship...

When Google Glass launched, most coverage focused on consumer novelty — hands-free photos, glanceable notifications, and the social awkwardness of wearing a computer on your face. But behind the hype, a more serious application was taking shape: augmented reality...

The boundary between self and environment seems solid — until science finds a way to dissolve it. Researchers have discovered that synchronizing a virtual reality display with a person’s own heartbeat can reliably trigger out-of-body experiences, opening new...

Throughout history, some of the most celebrated minds in science, technology, and mathematics have had well-documented relationships with psychoactive substances. While no responsible analysis would claim that drugs cause genius, the frequency with which brilliant...

The mobile phone in your pocket is more than a communication device. It is a tracking beacon that broadcasts your location to cell towers, Wi-Fi networks, and potentially to anyone with the technical capability and legal authority — or lack thereof — to intercept that...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has a long history of funding technologies that begin as military tools and gradually migrate into civilian life. When DARPA issued a solicitation calling for the development of a low-cost portable brain recording device...

California pioneered one of the most aggressive gun confiscation programs in the United States with its Armed and Prohibited Persons System, known as APPS. The program cross-references firearm purchase records against databases of individuals who have become legally...

When Chelsea Manning received a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, many observers noted a striking disparity: individuals convicted of deliberately selling secrets to hostile foreign governments had frequently received lighter...

Intelligence officials have developed a remarkable linguistic toolkit for discussing surveillance programs in ways that technically avoid outright lies while systematically misleading the public. Understanding this vocabulary of misdirection is essential for anyone...

As details about journalist Michael Hastings’ death remain unanswered following the release of a coroner’s report, a neighbor says the late reporter was afraid to get in his own car hours before he died in high-speed crash June 18 in Hollywood. Hastings, 33, was...

When British intelligence officials supervised the physical destruction of computer hard drives in the Guardian newspaper basement, they inadvertently created one of the most powerful illustrations of government overreach in the digital era. The episode revealed not...

The indictment of former Pakistani president and military ruler Pervez Musharraf in connection with the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto marked a watershed moment in Pakistani politics. For the first time, a former army chief faced criminal charges for acts...

In the summer of 2013, a scene unfolded in the basement of the Guardian newspaper offices in London that would become one of the most striking symbols of the tension between press freedom and state power in the digital age. Under the watchful eyes of intelligence...