In their annual threat briefing for legislators last week, the administration’s top intelligence experts ran through a long list of adversaries, from a theocratic Iran obfuscating on its nuclear intentions, to a crumbling North Korean military increasingly reliant on a nuclear deterrent, to unknown cyberfoes capable of wreaking havoc on the nation’s power grids and financial systems. Read the rest of this entry »

High-speed rail has long struck transportation buffs as a natural fit for the United States, with its dispersed population, vast open spaces, and national obsession with technological progress. Yet the nation lags far behind much of Europe and Asia in terms of high-speed trains. Indeed, the only locomotives in the United States capable of traveling at 140 mph (the low end of what rail experts consider high speed) are the Acela trains that run from Boston to Washington, and even there, old tracks keep the trains from running anywhere near their top speed. Read the rest of this entry »

The nation’s top counterterrorism officials yesterday warned that attacking the United States in the next three to six months remains a “top priority” for al Qaeda, but they also offered a new and expansive view of the threats posed to the cyberworld. Read the rest of this entry »

In one of the most contentious rulings in recent Supreme Court history, the high court last week overturned decades of legal precedent that limited how corporations, unions, and other organizations can participate in the political process. The 5-to-4 decision is all but certain to dramatically reshape the conduct of elections in the United States, campaign finance experts say. But experts remain divided over the ways in which elections, saturated as they already are in money from various sources, will change. Read the rest of this entry »