Buried inside hundreds of pages of heavily redacted court documents from the case of a man accused of being one of al Qaeda’s chief recruiters, is evidence that the terrorist group has launched successful cyberattacks, including one against government computers in Israel. This was the first public confirmation that the terrorist group has mounted an offensive cyberattack. The attacks were relatively unsophisticated and likely occurred before November 2001, when the prisoner who described them was arrested. Read the rest of this entry »

A child of the early Cold War, Robert Muthnow says he’s always had an interest in how society copes with the fear of its own extinction. His new book, Be Very Afraid: the Cultural Response to Terror, Pandemics, Environmental Devastation, Nuclear Annihilation, and Other Threats, offers some surprising insights into how humans think about themselves and their capacity to face peril. The editor of the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion and head of the Princeton University sociology department, Muthnow recently chatted with U.S. News about science, existential threats, and his own fears. Excerpts: Read the rest of this entry »

Hans Kristensen heads the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a group founded by some of the scientists who built the first atomic bomb in 1945. FAS keeps a running public tally of the world’s nuclear arsenals. All told, nine nations now have a combined total of more than 22,000 nuclear weapons. This week, President Obama hosts more than 45 foreign leaders at a nuclear security summit in Washington, D.C., and last week, he traveled to Prague to sign a treaty cutting the combined U.S.-Russian arsenals by about one third. Kristensen spoke with U.S. News about the new nuclear status quo and what’s being done to change it. Excerpts: Read the rest of this entry »