Geopolitics

In an Aug. 17 memorandum from Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Trump administration outlines its technology-related research and development priorities for fiscal year 2019. It calls for Agencies …

Iran’s air defence command conducted what was billed as the first test launch of the indigenously developed Talash air defence system on 28 December 2016. The tests began with the launch of Iranian-made Sayyad-2 medium-range, high-altitude surface-to-air missile. The Sayyad-2 is a canister-launched version of the RIM-66 (SM-1) naval surface-to-air missile …

Britain’s Ministry of Defense has released a new forecast of future world in 2035, in report, titled “Future Operating Environment 2035”. It describes the key institutional, cultural and physical characteristics, actors and their motivations, that are likely to shape the future operating environment. It identifies key implications to assess future …

For two decades now, the UNESCO Science Report series has been mapping science, technology and innovation (STI) around the world on a regular basis. It is a quinquennial report that focuses on longer-term trends, with respect to policy and science and technology indicators. Launching the sixth edition of UNESCO’s global …

Internet has become arguably the most important driver of disruptive innovation in the early twenty-first century, it has transformed the way in which people obtain news, conduct business, communicate with one another, socialize, and interact with public officials. Around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today. However …

A nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany has been struck, binding Iran on limiting its nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions. The lifting of sanctions is seeing rush of foreign companies, particularly European countries like …

Over the last few years, Russia and NATO have been caught in something of a security trap, where neither trusts the other’s intentions and thus tries to build up more military power to deter its rival. Although both think of their actions as defensive, their enemy sees pure aggression—and the …

ISIS, born from an al Qaeda splinter group and supported by many Sunni factions, made fierce advances in Iraq last year by taking over Iraq’s second biggest city, Mosul, and also the important cities of Fallujah and Tikrit. Early this year Isis lost Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein, …

Directed-energy weapons are among a handful of maturing disruptive or asymmetric technologies that could confer game-changing technological advantages both as a superior defensive capability and as an effective electronic attack option. For operations in anti-access/area-denial environments, they could strengthen U.S. power projection assets and defend fixed-site installations and/or expeditionary forces …