They’re saying the attack on Iran was proportional – here are the stats: You decide
COMMENTARY: By Nuri Vitacchi The US on Wednesday night destroyed civilian water utilities serving 20,000 Iranian people. “The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” US Central Command said in a statement on X. The punishment was “in response to yesterday’s downing of a US Army Apache helicopter,” the US Centcom said. READ

Alifereti Sakiasi: The geopolitical battle for Pacific media narratives
COMMENTARY: By Alifereti Sakiasi in Suva The contest for influence in the Pacific is no longer confined to diplomacy, aid projects or infrastructure. Increasingly, it is being waged through information, media and communications networks. A recent report, Understanding China’s Footprint in the Pacific Island Media Landscape, paints a picture of a region where newsrooms are

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COMMENTARY: By Nuri Vitacchi

The US on Wednesday night destroyed civilian water utilities serving 20,000 Iranian people.
“The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” US Central Command said in a statement on X.
The punishment was “in response to yesterday’s downing of a US Army Apache helicopter,” the US Centcom said.

READ MORE: Iran, US signal deal within reach as Israel continues attacks on Lebanon
US bombs Iran’s water facilities: Why that’s so significant
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So, one item of military transport (crew escaped without harm) is deemed equivalent to bringing harm and misery to 20,000 people.
And this was just hours before a so-called “peace deal” was announced as close to signing.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces began launching self-defense strikes against Iran at 5 p.m. ET today at the Commander in Chief’s direction, in response to yesterday’s downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter. The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian…

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) June 9, 2026

Yes, it was war crime
Destroying water utilities is a war crime. Under Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, it is strictly prohibited to attack or destroy infrastructure essential to civilian life, including water installations.
And the US committed this war crime for what?
The truth is that the destruction of the helicopter was no big deal.
Who said that? Donald Trump did. “Wasn’t a big deal. The pilot is fine,” he told the press.
Even more galling is the fact that the Iranians downed the helicopter as part of its self-defence efforts against a US-Israeli war that has been deemed illegal by multiple countries and organisations, including many in the US.
The lack of proportionality is the key to understanding what is really happening in West Asia. Here are three examples with up-to-date statistics.
1. Compare Lebanon and Israel numbers
Lebanon reported this week that Israeli attacks have now killed at least 3696 people and injured 11,413 others since March 2. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced.
On the Israeli side, 29 soldiers and one civilian contractor have been killed in Lebanon, according to the military.
Just 29 soldiers on the Israel side. On the Lebanon side, even if we ONLY count women, children or medics killed by Israel, there have been 730. So far.
And before anyone is tempted to say that Lebanon’s figures are untrustworthy, let’s remember that Lebanon’s government has long been US-aligned and opposed to Hezbollah.
2. Compare Iranian and US numbers
How many times have we heard about the 13 members of the US armed forces who lost their lives as part of the attack on Iran? Each was given a lengthy obituary in multiple media, including the The Guardian.
Just 13. And what about the 2988 men and 511 women killed by the US and Israel in Iran, as reported on Wednesday?
They’re just statistics.
3. Compare Israeli and Gaza numbers
In recent days, Israel killed at least 11 more Palestinians in Gaza, including women and children, adding to a total of more than 72,000 lives lost. The majority have been women and children.
Since the beginning of the retaliation after the October 2023 attack, Israel has lost just 1152 personnel, identified by its government as soldiers, police, and security officials.
See what I mean about proportionality? The contrast between casualties on the US-Israel side and those they are targeting is startling.
This week, the richest nation on earth lost a helicopter.
“No big deal.”
Nury Vittachi is a Sri Lankan-born author, writer and political commentator based in Hong Kong. He has written the novel series, The Feng Shui Detective and non-fiction works.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/13/theyre-saying-the-attack-on-iran-was-proportional-here-are-the-stats-you-decide/

COMMENTARY: By Alifereti Sakiasi in Suva

The contest for influence in the Pacific is no longer confined to diplomacy, aid projects or infrastructure.
Increasingly, it is being waged through information, media and communications networks.
A recent report, Understanding China’s Footprint in the Pacific Island Media Landscape, paints a picture of a region where newsrooms are under financial pressure, audiences are migrating online and foreign powers are competing to shape narratives.

READ MORE: Understanding China’s Footprint in the Pacific Island Media Landscape
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The findings are drawn from a major study conducted by researchers from the Washington DC-based Centre for Naval Analyses (CNA), a United States non-profit organisation specialising in security, strategic and public policy issues.
The report examined media systems and China’s engagement across 15 Pacific Island countries and territories between 2024 and 2025 through fieldwork, interviews and consultations with media practitioners, academics and policymakers.
The report was launched during a virtual panel discussion on May 20, 2026, featuring presentations by CNA researchers Heidi Holz, Genevieve Collins, John Mahoney and Darlene Onuorah.
They were joined by regional academics Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor and head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, and Professor Stephen Noakes, head of politics and international relations at the University of Auckland.
Broader questions
While the report focuses on China’s growing media footprint, it also raises broader questions about the future of journalism, media independence and information sovereignty in Pacific Island countries.
For Fiji, the findings are particularly significant. As one of the region’s largest media markets and a diplomatic hub for the Pacific, Fiji has become a focal point for Chinese engagement through media partnerships, journalist exchanges and government-to-government cooperation.
The report also argues that media organisations across the Pacific are facing some of the most challenging operating conditions in decades.
Researchers found widespread concerns about declining newspaper circulation, shrinking advertising revenues and the growing dominance of social media platforms. One Pacific media practitioner described the situation as “the worst in history” for the region’s media industry, while another said many newsrooms had become a “revolving door” because journalists frequently leave for better-paying jobs.
The report warns that these financial pressures are creating vulnerabilities that external actors can exploit through media assistance, training programmes and content partnerships, making media sustainability not only an economic issue but increasingly a geopolitical one.
At the same time, researchers concluded that China’s overall influence remains limited compared with the longstanding reach and credibility of Australian and New Zealand media organisations.
The report has sparked wider discussion among Pacific media leaders about foreign aid, editorial independence and the long-term sustainability of journalism in the region.
Support for democracy
Dr Singh argues that aid to the media sector is often portrayed as support for democracy and media freedom, but is also shaped by geopolitics, donor interests and soft power.
“Even media aid comes with strings attached, regardless of who the donor is or what they claim,” he said.
According to Dr Singh, the Pacific’s media crisis is not new. The region continues to experience high levels of journalist attrition, while journalism schools that train future reporters receive little attention from major donor-funded media programmes.
He argues that much of the support provided to the media sector is driven by strategic interests rather than long-term capacity building.
Dr Singh’s assessment mirrors one of the CNA report’s central observations — that foreign interest in Pacific media is increasingly being shaped by strategic competition, particularly concerns over China’s growing influence in the region.
Fiji Media Association general secretary Stanley Simpson says the issue is less about who is offering support and more about whether that support responds to the needs of Pacific media organisations.
“Too much ‘let’s help ourselves and give more money to ourselves so we can help the Pacific’ and not enough ‘let’s work with Pacific media so they can help themselves and be our partner’,” he said.
Inconsistent support
Simpson was responding to an article by Australian journalism academic Professor Alexandra Wake of RMIT University, who argued that Australia risks weakening its soft-power influence through inconsistent support for international broadcasting and regional journalism initiatives.
Dr Wake contended that trusted news services remain critical to regional stability, particularly as misinformation spreads and other powers expand their influence.
However, Simpson says the issue is not simply the amount of funding available, but where it is directed.
“We are looking for real funding and support that makes a difference,” he said.
“Not one-sided funding which seems to help Australian organisations more than Fijians.”
He argues that Fiji media organisations have repeatedly sought practical assistance such as cameras, editing equipment, software and broadcast technology, but have often been offered training programmes instead.
His comments highlight a recurring theme in the debate over media aid in the Pacific. While Australia remains one of the region’s most trusted media partners through the ABC and programs such as PACMAS, there is continuing discussion over whether media assistance is sufficiently aligned with Pacific priorities.
Simply struggling
For all the discussion about foreign influence, many Pacific media organisations are simply struggling to survive.
The CNA report notes that declining revenues, digital disruption and staffing shortages have weakened media resilience throughout the region. These challenges were compounded by the covid-19 pandemic and continue to affect both commercial and public-interest journalism.
Dr Singh says this financial pressure helps explain why Pacific organisations increasingly engage with a range of development partners.
While Australia is understandably reluctant to create dependency, he argues that Pacific media systems operate in small markets where economies of scale do not exist and long-term support remains necessary.
To illustrate the situation, Dr Singh cited veteran Tongan publisher and Pacific Islands News Association president Kalafi Moala.
“When you are drowning, you will grab at any hand that is outstretched. You don’t care whether it is China, Australia or America.”
That sentiment may help explain why China’s media engagement efforts have attracted increasing attention.
Digital media
According to the CNA report, China has expanded media cooperation agreements, journalist exchanges, training programmes and diplomatic engagement throughout the Pacific. Fiji has featured prominently in these efforts, including agreements on digital media cooperation and journalist training.
At the same time, the report concludes that Chinese state media outlets still have relatively limited reach among Pacific audiences. Broadcasters such as Australia’s ABC and New Zealand’s RNZ remain among the most trusted international news providers in the region.
Trust, however, cannot be taken for granted.
Simpson argues that Pacific media organisations demonstrated resilience during Fiji’s years of political restrictions and economic hardship, often with limited international support.
“When we were being beaten, threatened and censored, and almost closing down due to political and economic pressure, where was Australian support for the Fiji media?” he asked.
The question challenges traditional development partners to consider whether support for Pacific media has always matched their stated commitment to democratic values and press freedom.
Broader geopolitical contest
As the CNA report makes clear, Pacific media organisations now find themselves at the centre of a broader geopolitical contest.
Foreign governments will continue to compete for influence and aid priorities will continue to be shaped by strategic interests. Yet for Pacific journalists confronting shrinking revenues, digital disruption and rising public expectations, the more pressing issue is sustainability.
The real challenge is not who provides support, but whether that support genuinely strengthens Pacific media organisations, protects editorial independence and helps ensure they remain accountable to the communities they serve.
Alifereti Sakiasi is a journalist with The Fiji Times. Based in Suva, he primarily contributes to The Sunday Times, where he covers a wide array of human interest, social, cultural, and sports events. This article is republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/13/alifereti-sakiasi-the-geopolitical-battle-for-pacific-media-narratives/

Illegal dumping of waste is costing the UK government over a £1 billion per year. malaha/Shutterstock Illegal waste dumping in the UK is no longer a marginal nuisance. It is increasingly operating at an industrial scale, with serious consequences.

The reported dumping of around 30,000 tonnes of waste at a protected site of special scientific interest in Leicestershire is one recent example of how severe the problem has become. Similar concerns have emerged recently at the large illegal waste site near Kidlington, Oxfordshire, where shredded mixed waste was deposited close to waterways.

These are signs of a broader waste-crime economy that is damaging land, water and communities while shifting the bill onto the public. The House of Lords environment and climate change committee estimated that waste crime costs the UK economy about £1 billion a year.

Part of the problem is that by the time large fly-tipping sites are discovered, it can be difficult to identify the original source. This is where digital technology and geospatial intelligence are becoming increasingly important.

My ongoing research focuses on exactly this problem: mapping and characterising uncontrolled waste disposal sites worldwide, and using satellite data, geospatial intelligence and AI to identify where they are, how large they are and what risks they pose to nearby people and ecosystems.

The principle is simple: you cannot manage what you cannot measure. If waste crime is going to be tackled properly, the sites have to be found first.

Satellite imagery and remote sensing now allow researchers and regulators to monitor land-use change, detect unusual waste accumulations, and identify environmental risks at scales impossible through traditional inspections alone, as demonstrated by recent work using satellite imagery and AI to identify dumpsites in 28 cities.

How would it work? Drones can provide high-resolution imagery of suspect sites, while AI systems can analyse patterns and flag high-risk activity quickly. To do this, they will build on advances in waste-site detection from aerial and satellite imagery.

Thermal imaging and technologies to detect methane can also identify emissions from decomposing waste that would otherwise remain invisible. Recent studies show the growing capability of satellite-based methane monitoring to identify major emission sources and help create more effective waste-sector policies.

These tools are especially valuable because most large illegal waste sites do not appear overnight. They grow gradually over months or years, so earlier detection creates an opportunity to get on top of the problem before environmental damage escalates.

While these technologies are not usually sufficient on their own to identify individual offenders, they can provide evidence of when and where illegal dumping occurs, help authorities monitor sites over time, and support targeted investigations and enforcement actions.

Their value is often in enabling earlier intervention.

Read more: Dirty gold: the fly-tipping gangs costing councils millions – and how you can help The UK government is due to launch a digital waste tracking service in October 2026, replacing outdated paper-based systems with real-time digital reporting.

Official waste operators will then have to create records of receipt of waste, or face fines. If implemented effectively, the system could improve traceability across the waste chain and make it far harder for waste to disappear into illegal sites unnoticed.

The government is already starting to use drones to help track down waste dumpers. Drone pilots are already starting to be used to try and track illegal waste dumpers. How big is the problem? Local authorities in England dealt with 1.26 million fly-tipping incidents in 2024-25, a 9% increase from the previous year.

However, the total number of court fines decreased by 9% over the same period. Analysis reported by the Guardian suggested the UK may now have around 8,000 illegal waste sites and those that dumped the waste have avoided about £1.63 billion in landfill tax.

Globally, a report from the UN Environmental Programme estimated the hidden costs of uncontrolled waste disposal reached US$243.3 billion (£181 billion) worldwide in 2020. The environmental damage depends on quantity, composition, location and how long waste remains in place.

Illegal sites often contain mixed household rubbish, plastics, construction debris, shredded material, and sometimes hazardous waste. As this material degrades, it can cause damage to water, soil, air and possibly human health, preliminary research suggests.

Without impermeable barriers or drainage, polluted leachate (contaminated liquid generated by waste) can move into soils, rivers and groundwater. There’s considerable risk in floodplains and other sensitive areas, where heavy rain can carry pollution further and faster.

What are the problems caused by dumps? Illegal dumps can also attract pests and other disease carriers, creating public health concerns, disturbing habitats and harming wildlife. Animals may ingest plastics and other harmful materials, while the wind can spread shredded waste across nearby land.

In some cases, waste can catch fire, releasing smoke and fine particulates into the air. In addition, when organic waste decomposes in the absence of oxygen, it produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The economic cost is equally severe.

Cleaning up major illegal dumpsites is technically difficult and extraordinarily expensive. Authorities must map the site, assess contamination risks, identify hazardous materials, secure the area, and safely remove and process the waste. In sensitive locations such as river corridors or floodplains, sorting out the problem becomes even more complex.

The Environment Agency has warned that clearing the Oxfordshire site could cost over £7 million. The obvious question is why this keeps happening. Part of the answer is economic. Proper waste disposal is expensive, while illegal dumping can generate large profits for individuals by illegally avoiding landfill taxes and compliance costs.

Waste also moves through fragmented supply chains involving brokers, subcontractors, carriers and temporary operators, making accountability difficult. Historically, waste tracking in the UK has relied heavily on paper documentation, creating opportunities for fraud, falsified records and waste simply “disappearing” from the system.

What next? Technology alone, however, is not enough. Better monitoring must be combined with stronger enforcement, improved coordination between agencies, clearer accountability across supply chains, and meaningful penalties that outweigh the financial incentives of illegal dumping.

Illegal waste is not simply a waste-management issue. It is an environmental, economic and public-health issue. Allowing industrial-scale dumping to become normalised would shift enormous long-term costs onto society, ecosystems, and future generations.

Prevention, transparency and early detection are ultimately far cheaper and far less damaging than attempting to clean up after the damage has already been done.

Amani Maalouf receives funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Digital Research Infrastructure programme, administered by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) on behalf of UKRI.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/criminal-fly-tipping-gangs-are-costing-governments-millions-ai-and-drones-can-help-track-waste-dumpers/

A new exhibition at the Opera Gallery London, is offering two very different – yet curiously complimentary – sets of artistic responses to nature. It highlights the work of Dutch sculptor Pieter Obels and French-Chinese painter Feng Xiao-Min.

This is Obels’s first major London exhibition for ten years. Born in 1968 and now based in Tilburg in his native Netherlands, Obels is a sculptor who works primarily with the kind of complex Corten steel structures on display here.

He welds sheets of steel into flowing curves to form one continuous and sinuous series of interweaving loops. These often rest, seemingly defying gravity, on a single fixed point. Yet most of them can be rotated by hand, allowing viewers to engage with the art.

The fascination in these sculptures lies in the invitation to trace their delicate patterns with eye and hand. They writhe like the tendrils of climbing plants. This effect is reinforced by Obels’ deliberate weathering of their surfaces into a rusty earthen brown that almost gives them the appearance of being covered by lichen.

Obels’ sculptures spill out over into outside space in the Medici Gardens at the rear of the gallery. The monumental piece placed there acts as a visual confirmation of how stunningly Obels’ work integrates itself into natural settings.

Meanwhile, its title – I Know the End, Let’s Dance (2024) – tells us about Obels’ intuitive practice.

As he told me on opening night: “The less I think about the sculpture, the better it is.” Feng Xiao-Min In dialogue with Obels’ work, the walls of the gallery carry the mist-laden compositions of Feng Xiao-Min.

This is the first major London exhibition of this Chinese-French artist, who was born in Shanghai in 1959 but has lived and worked in Fontainebleau in France for 35 years. It is good to see this intriguing body of work, which draws on both western and Chinese artistic traditions, in this setting.

Feng deliberately leaves his paintings untitled to avoid giving them any specificity. As with Obels, they are organic responses to his feelings and engagement with nature at the time of composition. This shapes the palette used in the individual pieces.

Some he described to me as expressing chaleur (warmth), while others are cooler and achieve their effect through subtle layering of pigments and tonal shifts across the canvas. The result is a series of dreamlike landscapes that defy traditional approaches to perspective.

There is no central point. Instead, Feng seems to start his compositions with three to four short lines in white, red or black grouped around the middle, lower-part of the canvas. Around these focal moments in the narrative of each work, the eye tracks across, picking out hints of structure, wisps of weather and intimations of landscape.

Feng’s early training in calligraphy is readily identifiable in his practice, influenced by, among others, the dynamic art of the Qing dynasty painter Shi Tao and his efforts in his works to use the past to open up the present.

The lines that punctuate Feng’s paintings are like calligraphic marks, while the swirl of interblending tones are redolent of J.M.W. Turner’s more abstract works. This provides a compelling amalgam of Chinese and western approaches to the depiction of nature in paintings whose depth rewards the viewer’s gaze.

Feng’s works speak of how landscapes make us feel. The physicality of Obels’ works provides a more sensory engagement with nature. Obels grew up on a farm, which gave him a sense of the human relationship with nature that defines his work.

City-born Feng’s ethereal visions encourage us to appreciate nature in a more imaginative way. Like Obels’ structures, these two approaches are harmonically in balance in this exhibition.

Pieter Obels | Feng Xiao-Min is at the Opera Gallery London until July 5 2026

Pippa Catterall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/pieter-obels-and-feng-xiao-min-a-compelling-exploration-of-nature-through-steel-and-paint/

Baby slings offer convenience and promote infant bonding, but serious risks include suffocation, falls, and hip dysplasia if the sling is used incorrectly Natalia Deriabina/Shutterstock Human babies are born more dependent on their caregivers than most other mammals.

They need close contact with an adult for feeding, comfort, warmth and protection. Parents and caregivers around the world have carried their babies for thousands of years using slings and carriers. Today, many babies spend some of their daytime sleep in a sling or carrier.

In a recent UK survey that my colleagues and I conducted, 96% of the 1,470 parents and carers of babies under one who responded said they had used one, often to soothe their baby or remain mobile while keeping them close.

Slings and carriers can be useful, but babies need to be positioned carefully, particularly when they are very young or are being fed. In a systematic review, my colleagues and I found reports of infrequent accidental deaths and injuries associated with poorly fitted or incorrectly positioned carriers.

Following the death of a seven-week-old baby who was being breastfed hands-free in a carrier while his mother moved around her home, a coroner warned that parents were not being given enough information about how to position young babies safely and called for consideration of industry standards.

The Lullaby Trust, a baby-safety charity, has also published advice urging parents not to feed babies hands-free in slings or carriers. At the Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre, my colleagues and I study infant sleep and sleep safety.

We take an anthropological approach, considering both babies’ physical needs and the cultural expectations placed on parents. This helps us develop evidence-based guidance for families, health professionals and policymakers. To understand both the benefits and risks of babywearing, we first carried out a systematic review.

A systematic review is a method of bringing together and evaluating the available research on a particular topic. We found evidence that using slings and carriers can benefit babies and caregivers. Reported benefits included supporting breastfeeding, promoting infant development, strengthening parent-infant bonding and improving parental mental health and wellbeing.

The review also examined the risks associated with sling and carrier use. Overall, deaths associated with slings and carriers were infrequent. When deaths did occur, the most common cause was asphyxia, which means a baby is unable to get enough oxygen.

Young babies, especially those under four months of age, are particularly vulnerable because their neck muscles are still developing and may not be strong enough to support their relatively large heads. If a baby’s head and neck are not properly supported, or if they are positioned unsafely, their chin can fall onto their chest and restrict their airway, making it harder to breathe.

This is known as positional asphyxia. The review also found that injuries were most commonly linked to falls, either because a baby fell from a sling or carrier or because the caregiver carrying them fell.

Both deaths and injuries were often associated with slings or carriers that were poorly fitted or used incorrectly. This suggests that clearer guidance on safe use could help to prevent some of these incidents. To understand what parents know about sling safety, we also conducted a survey of UK caregivers.

We found that parents use slings and carriers for a wide range of reasons, including making it easier to get around, strengthening bonds with their baby and helping to soothe or settle them. Most parents began using a sling during the early months of infancy and many had already decided to do so while pregnant.

Despite this, many parents reported receiving little or no information about safe sling use from manufacturers or retailers when purchasing a sling or carrier. We also found that many were unaware of the specialist support available across the UK.

This includes sling libraries, community services where parents can borrow different types of slings and carriers, receive personalised fitting advice and learn how to use them safely. A quarter of the parents surveyed were not aware of existing UK guidance on sling safety.

Another quarter felt that the guidance they had seen did not provide enough information. These findings highlight both the important role that slings and carriers play in infant care and the need for clearer, more accessible safety information for families.

Our research shows that slings and carriers can offer benefits for babies and caregivers. It also found that deaths and injuries associated with sling use are infrequent and are often linked to poor fit or unsafe positioning.

Although these incidents are uncommon, their consequences can be devastating. Parents need clear, practical information about safe use. With slings and carriers widely used in the UK, there is a strong case for a national, evidence-based campaign on sling safety.

Parents should receive clear guidance at the point of purchase, including information about how to position babies safely, how to recognise and prevent positional asphyxia and why it is important to keep babies under close observation while they are in a sling or carrier.

Guidance should also direct families to specialist sources of support so that they can use slings and carriers safely and confidently while enjoying the benefits they offer.

Sophie Lovell-Kennedy has received funding from the ESRC NINE DTP, Lullaby Trust and Teddy’s Wish, and Northumberland County Council.

She is currently affiliated with the Lullaby Trust in a voluntary role.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/baby-slings-what-the-evidence-says-about-benefits-risks-and-safe-use/

Intimacy, without AI, is messy. Alberto Menendez Cervero/Shutterstock The CEO of dating app Hinge recently suggested that generation Z, “struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there”, needs AI to help them find love.

Apparently, without AI tools, younger people will struggle to express who they really are.

From the fascinating rise and uncertain social impact of AI relationship apps, to the hype of dating app companies promising a revolution in online dating, wherever intimacy can be mediated by AI, there is a company encouraging people to make us of it.

Third-party AI apps are being used to make our chats funnier, or our profiles sexier. People are using purpose-built AI tools to train them to be better at talking to people, or simply using existing chatbots like ChatGPT to navigate conflict in their relationships or run their social lives.

Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges. Love IRL is the latest series from Quarter Life that explores it all.

These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status. Making sense of how AI is shaping intimate life is part of my work as a love and relationship researcher.

What started as a theoretical exercise, exploring the moral significance of possible use for AI, quickly entered the classroom. A business student once told me how he used an AI model to help resolve an argument with his girlfriend.

“It was like a friend,” he said, “and helped me understand her perspective better”. AI helped him express his own feelings with more clarity, and practice a hard conversation. Who wouldn’t be tempted to use these tools, to have support when trying to date, make friends, navigate family tension or work on one’s mental health?

There are obvious reasons to urge caution on these temptations, at least until we have a better understanding of their long-term effects.

Experts are concerned about the accuracy of AI when issuing advice, and the fact that these tools and models are trained on data that reflects a host of biases about human beings, how they interact, and about what good intimacy looks like.

There are also longstanding privacy concerns about the risks of sharing our most intimate lives with technology companies. Read more: The problems with dating apps and how they could be fixed – two relationship experts discuss AI and intimacy There are less obvious, but even more important reasons for caution.

These have to do with the nature of intimacy itself. The normalisation of AI to mediate and shape intimacy arguably erodes self-curiosity. Attempts to frontload intimate life, shape and hone interactions, and stave off disagreement or emotional friction risk replacing the desire to find out what we think, feel and want in the moment.

The seduction of control crowds out the benefits and pleasure of curiosity.

Empirical research suggests curious people are apparently less hostile, more open to the unknown, and more willing to let others speak, and that curiosity helps us avoid the excesses of power imbalances – all important factors in intimacy.

Ease of access to AI tools to mediate intimacy makes it easier to be gripped by a simplistic understanding of intimate life itself. Dating, for example, risks being seen as something to succeed at, conversation something to excel at, arguments as things to be won.

Intimacy is much more than a game in which conversational inputs are exchanged until mutual satisfaction is reached. Intimacy is messy, dynamic, embodied and unpredictable. Real intimacy is improv, not scripted narrative. Some might argue that AI tools help us acquire the skills we need for this messy improv.

But, in my view, this seems false.

Just as AI has been shown to deskill workplaces, or make people less able to reason critically about problems, so we should worry it will cause intimate deskilling: the erosion of the abilities needed to imagine, pursue and sustain the intimacy we desire.

These skills – what I call “romantic agency” – are built and maintained in action.

No amount of advice or honing of flirtatious lines can replace the benefits to our agency of being able to experience ourselves, in action, having hard conversations, taking risks, making moves and expressing our feelings.

Is a perfect, AI-generated message the key to love? This author thinks not. Oleg Nesterov/Shutterstock There are aesthetic considerations here too. Do we really want intimate life to take on the homogenous, bland, culturally nuance-less tone favoured by generative AI?

Things are better and richer when we embrace what liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill called “experiments in living”. Exploration, inconsistency, playfulness and pleasure in expression should be celebrated. Humanness and care are visible as much in how we communicate as in what we communicate.

The promise of companies seeking to mediate our intimate lives with their AI tools is that they can make us more efficient and successful in the “dating market”. But we should resist this framing. Influential street photographer Daniel Arnold was once asked why he still preferred to shoot on film, rather than use easier and more immediate digital cameras.

His answer: “Digital photography is a conversation with success, and film photography is with failure.” Shooting film means he can’t “be precious, be calculating” but must live in the moment, act and see how things unfold.

We should embrace analogue intimacy, without AI mediation, for the same reason.

In letting go, and giving up the ability to practice, tweak and revise before we approach someone, the true adventure of intimacy can begin.

Luke Brunning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/as-ai-plays-a-bigger-role-in-relationships-true-intimacy-is-getting-lost/

The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan is about an institution tasked with the job of housing strangers – Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel.

Through this hotel, which sits high on a hill, and the people within it, seasoned BBC journalist and current foreign affairs editor, Lyse Doucet, attempts tell an immersive history of the sweeping changes that have faced Afghanistan since it opened in 1969.

The book has won the third ever Women’s prize in non-fiction. As an scholar of the region, I can tell you that the hotel is a useful lens through which to tell the recent history of Afghanistan.

The modern state of Afghanistan occupies an integral position in the Silk Road region. It was home to an expansive and historic civilisation in which commerce and hospitality had long been entwined with one another.

Inns, better known as caravanseries in the region, played a central role in the provision of security, the exchange of information, and the formation of identity for traders. Beyond caravanserais, caring for strangers occupied a critical place in the local moral universe of people in the region.

In some contexts this took place in communal gathering places; in others, in villages or the guesthouses of the wealthy and powerful. Across the region, though, social institutions designed to receive, respect, and protect outsiders, from near and far, were a prominent feature of everyday life.

While a very different sort of resting place, The Kabul Intercontinental sits within this rich history.

Read more: Women’s prize for non-fiction: powerful biographies, moving histories and creative approaches to health – six experts review the shortlist and winner As with other bold architectural buildings of the 1960s, whose history is also tied up to a flow of western capital, the hotel stood for a vision of Afghanistan’s future – of modernity, development and international prestige.

As the years passed, the reality ebbed and waned. Its initial guests included Pan American Airlines flight crews and Afghan socialite and fashion designer Safia Tarzi, a scion of the country’s ruling royal family.

People staying in its plush rooms enjoyed local delicacies like drinks from the Afghan-Clemd factory (a state-owned distillery) whose products included the rare taste of alcohol imported from Mongolia and others flavoured with the finest Afghan red raisins.

This luxury, however, would change as the final decade of the cold war ripped Afghanistan and its families to shreds. This is when Doucet’s relationship with the hotel began as she first checked in on Christmas eve 1988.

In its walls she experienced the Soviet evacuation. She saw armed mujahideen commanders from the hills, internationally renowned terrorists, and Taliban leaders tear out the hotel’s bars and smash the bottles of brandy they discovered within.

Gone was the glamour, along with the music and mixed-gendered dancing in the hotel’s ballroom. After the events of 9/11, the international jetset did return. However, these guests were uniformed Nato officials, local elites, international journalists and the employees of aid organisations.

They flocked to the hotel, but often pursued by Taliban fighters who tracked them down with ruthless and bloody efficiency. So Kabul’s “finest hotel” became to be associated with the cloistered and security-cordoned lives of Afghan and international elites and their acolytes.

But as Doucet emphasises throughout, it was ordinary people who kept the institution afloat. Responding to changes of personnel and ideological direction, they navigated the changing, violent and deeply unpredictable world around them with deftness and skill.

Many losing their lives in the course of doing so. Around the world, similar hotels were built to demonstrate prestige and signal prosperous futures. However, while the Intercontinental’s doors never closed, others have either fallen into disrepair or come to be used for purposes quite different from those for which they were designed.

Take the Sevastopol Hotel in Moscow, which was built in 1979 to accommodate visitors for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. In the 1990s, it was transformed by Afghan merchants. Rooms built to house guests visiting for Olympics were transformed into commercial offices and retail shops; the hotel’s underground levels becoming warehouses packed full of Chinese-made toys, hardware items, and suitcases.

Doucet’s book is one of the few conventional journalistic accounts of Afghanistan that depicts the country’s ordinary people as rounded individuals seeking to lead respectable lives amid violence and unpredictability. It is a welcome corrective work and a worthy winner.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Magnus Marsden receives funding from the AHRC.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/womens-prize-for-non-fiction-winner-the-finest-hotel-in-kabul-gives-voice-to-the-people-of-afghanistan/

The flavanols found in many fruits and vegetables are beneficial for heart health. nadianb/ Shutterstock Fruits and vegetables are an important part of our diet. They provide nutrients and fibre, and many contain additional compounds (known as bioactives) that can improve health.

But not all foods are created equal – with big differences in the amount of bioactives we get from cabbages, carrots, pulses and peppers. The well-known “five-a-day” campaign forms the basis of current dietary recommendations for fruit and vegetable consumption.

The campaign focuses mainly on reminding people to consume at least five portions of fruits or vegetables each day. This is a sensible approach, because it’s always better to eat some fruits and vegetables instead of none.

But could we do better? Could choosing fruits and vegetables more carefully help us to get important bioactives from our foods? My latest research suggests this is the case. We found that following current dietary recommendations might not be good enough when it comes to getting these important, health-boosting bioactive compounds from fruits and veggies.

This could have particularly important implications for heart health. In the study my colleagues and I conducted, we specifically investigated flavanols. This group of bioactive compounds are found in many plant-based foods, including tea, apples and berries.

Flavanols have been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease. About 500mg of flavanols per day are enough for most people to see health benefits from flavanols. We wanted to find how many people eat at least 500mg of flavanols per day – and whether these are the people who eat their five-a-day and follow dietary recommendations.

To do this, we did not rely on food diaries or dietary questionnaires – methods that are known to be unreliable. People often forget what they’ve eaten, and the flavanol content in food is very variable.

Instead, we measured flavanol intake directly, using a biomarker in urine that reflects what the body actually absorbed. We did this in around 30,000 participants across two large studies in the UK and the US. Read more: A whole new way of doing nutrition research Our findings revealed there was good and bad news.

The good news was that it’s perfectly possible to get 500mg of flavanols per day from a normal diet. The bad news was that fewer than one in five participants actually did this – even among those who ate their five a day.

This is not surprising. Many fruits and vegetables do not contain a lot of flavanols. Cauliflower, carrots or cucumber, for instance, don’t contain any, while mangoes, medlars and kiwis only very small amounts. When choosing a random selection of five fruits or vegetables, it’s very unlikely that they’ll add up to 500mg a day.

Another surprising result was that there was a big difference between participants in the US and UK.

US participants were more likely to get their daily flavanol intake if they followed US dietary recommendations (which are similar to the UK’s fruit and veg recommendations) – although only one in five did so.

Around 20% of US participants consumed 500mg of flavanols daily. But in the UK, the opposite was true. Only about 10% of those who consumed their recommended five portions a day also consumed 500mg of flavanols. Yet this number was closer to 20% in those who did not follow these recommendations.

We also found that those who reported eating the smallest amount of fruits and vegetables daily had the higher flavanol intake. There may be a couple of key reasons for these findings. There are some key differences between the two studies: the UK participants came from the Epic Norfolk study, which was designed to be representative of the general public.

The baseline diet data we used was collected in the 1990s. In contrast, the US participants of the Cosmos study were recruited in the 2010s and generally had a better diet than the population average.

But if we look at just the UK cohort alone, the explanation for the disparities in flavanol intake can be found in a cup of tea. Literally. Tea is a great source of flavanols, and a few cups of tea daily can already provide 200-300mg.

In a country where tea is a staple, this can make an important contribution. It’s not surprising that the UK has one of the highest flavanol intakes in Europe. In countries where coffee is the staple drink – such as the US – tea consumption is often associated with an overall healthier diet.

But this is not the case in the UK, where tea is not a marker of a particular healthy – or unhealthy – lifestyle. Indeed, people with high tea consumption don’t eat more fruits and vegetables than others.

Although tea is not part of any dietary recommendations, it may be the main driver for flavanol intake in the UK. This means that a good cup of tea may do more for flavanol intake than a randomly chosen portion of fruit or veg.

What does this mean? People who follow current dietary recommendations are unlikely to consume a sufficient amount of flavanols. It’s likely the same applies to other bioactives, such as carotenoids, (which can support vision).

There’s also huge variability in the bioactive content of different fruits and vegetables. A random selection of five fruits and veg each day is unlikely to provide meaningful amounts. This isn’t surprising, as bioactives are generally not part of dietary recommendations.

But our increasing understanding of the important role of bioactives in disease prevention and public health raises the question of whether this should change. Five-a-day guidance continues to be an important dietary recommendation, especially as most of us do not eat enough fruits and vegetables.

But as we learn more about the benefits of different plant compounds, we should consider prioritising consumption of certain fruits and vegetable daily to increase intake of these compounds. Whether you manage two portions or five, choosing wisely makes a difference.

Gunter Kuhnle has received research funding from Mars, Inc., a company engaged in flavanol research and flavanol-related commercial activities.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/not-all-fruits-and-vegetables-are-equal-when-it-comes-to-heart-health-our-research-shows/

Researchers have mapped vast fungal networks underground and there’s much more to fungi than the mushrooms we see above the surface. Jan Stria/Shutterstock Beneath our feet lie some of the largest living organisms on Earth.

Fungi are mostly invisible and largely overlooked, but they help sustain the ecosystems and food systems that we depend on every day. In a new global study, colleagues and I have mapped Earth’s vast underground networks of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.

These fungi are invisible to the naked eye and form partnerships with the roots of most land plants. Their hyphae – fungal thread-like filaments – explore soil that roots cannot reach. This helps plants acquire water and nutrients in exchange for carbon fixed by the plants through photosynthesis.

These mycorrhizal relationships are ancient, dating back more than 450 million years, and were probably instrumental in helping plants colonise land. This new research provides the first global estimate of the sheer scale of these underground fungal networks.

We found that the world’s topsoils contain approximately 110 quadrillion kilometres of living fungal filaments. That is almost one billion times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Read more: The ancient, intimate relationship between trees and fungi, from fairy toadstools to technicolour mushrooms Mycorrhizal fungi are also major players in the Earth’s carbon cycle.

Each year, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi channel an estimated 3.12 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent from plant photosynthesis into the soil and collectively contain around 300 megatonnes of carbon. Yet despite their enormous contribution to ecosystem functioning, they remain largely overlooked in global assessments of biodiversity, carbon storage and ecosystem health.

Mapping Earth’s hidden circulatory system This international effort was hugely ambitious.

We collected data from hundreds of sites across continents, combining field observations, ecological datasets and modelling approaches to create the first global estimate of where arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks occur and how abundant they could be.

The findings highlight how grasslands are among the most important hotspots for underground fungal life. Prairies, steppes, savannas and wetlands collectively contain around 40% of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Some of the densest concentrations have been found in places such as the Sudd wetlands of South Sudan, the Florida everglades and the Tibetan plateau.

Scientists explain how they have mapped underground networks of fungal filaments. This challenges the tendency to focus almost exclusively on trees and forests when discussing carbon storage and ecosystem conservation and restoration. Grasslands, aided by their extensive fungal partnerships, store much of their carbon below ground, making them less vulnerable to disturbances such as wildfire, drought and storm damage.

Why fungal networks matter for farming The implications of the findings extend far beyond natural ecosystems. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi act as underground extensions of plant root systems. This makes them potentially critical allies for future sustainable agriculture.

However, our study found that intensively managed croplands contain nearly half the fungal density found in comparable natural ecosystems. Practices such as intensive tillage, excessive fertiliser use and fungicide application can disrupt or suppress these fungal networks.

Mycorrhizal fungi are associated with the root systems of land plants. marian.galicia/Shutterstock Coupled with previous work showing that the same practices also reduce mycorrhizal fungal diversity, a troubling picture emerges: modern agricultural intensification is simplifying and diminishing the fungal communities that help keep soils fertile, crops productive and ecosystems resilient.

When fungal communities decline, soils often become more dependent on external inputs. By contrast, healthy, diverse, fungal networks improve nutrient cycling, enhance soil structure, enhance plant productivity and help them cope with environmental stress. Protecting and restoring these networks could therefore play an important role in developing more resilient and sustainable farming systems.

While this research marks an important milestone, it is also the beginning of a much larger scientific research effort. Public interest in underground fungal networks sometimes leads to claims that they function as a “wood wide web”, in which trees are thought to exchange nutrients, transmit warning signals and actively support one another.

But these claims exceed the available evidence. While fungal networks undoubtedly connect plants and facilitate resource exchange, scientists are still working to understand exactly how these relationships function under real-world conditions. Our new study provides a crucial baseline: the first global map of where these fungal networks are and how much of them exists.

To improve soil health, strengthen food security and build resilience to climate change, we need to pay more attention to the life-support system beneath our feet.

Katie Field receives funding from the European Research Council, the Royal Society (provided by DSIT), the NERC and the BBSRC.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/fungal-highways-are-vast-yet-hidden-underground-new-study/

CAR-T cells must overcome cancer’s many defenses in order to mount an effective attack. Lulu Perez, CC BY-SA You might think of cancer as a mass of rogue cells that grow uncontrollably. But cancer is more organized and strategic than that.

Rather, cancer is a tightly controlled cellular neighborhood that can keep the body’s defenses out or weaken them once they get in. Cancer behaves like a gated community. It has its own residents, rules and security systems.

Together, these features create what scientists refer to as the tumor microenvironment, where cancer cells live and interact with the body. To devise new treatments that can break into this neighborhood, researchers are learning how cancer builds its own roadways and places improvised explosive devices to destroy any unwanted guests, including anticancer drugs.

We are cancer researchers studying how tumors evade the immune system and weaken the effectiveness of treatments meant to destroy them. We devised a way to add a protective shield over anticancer immune cells, allowing them to enter cancer’s neighborhood unscathed and decapitate tumors.

What is the tumor microenvironment? Cancers don’t just passively exist in the body. They create an ecosystem of other cells and components that actively controls what gets in, what they can do and how long they last.

This ecosystem provides a highly coordinated and supportive infrastruture for a cancer to live in. The cancer instructs the body to build super roadways (blood vessels) and homes (tumor cells) resistant to decay.

It also installs security devices (protective molecules) to eliminate unwanted guests and enlists loyal law enforcement officers (other cells in the body) by releasing recruitment signals (molecules called cytokines and growth factors) to the normal tissues surrounding it.

Aging affects the composition of the tumor microenvironment. The tumor microenvironment allows cancer to withstand an onslaught from a body’s natural immune defenses. It also allows tumors to escape what would normally be catastrophic changes in temperature and oxygen levels.

How well cancer coordinates the construction and maintenance of this neighborhood is constantly in flux. This give cancer researchers opportunities to disrupt the tumor’s ecosystem and attack it. Engineering immune cells to kill cancer The tumor microenvironment poses a major problem for the immune system’s ability to recognize and destroy abnormal cells, including cancer.

Cancer cells often find ways to avoid detection or suppress immune responses. One way they do this is by altering the sugars that cover their surfaces. Normally this sugar coat triggers the immune system to kill the cancer cells.

But tumors can change these sugars in a way that make them no longer recognizable to the immune system. Additionally, cancer cells can secrete molecules that can deactivate the ability of immune cells to kill them.

To overcome the tumor microenvironment, researchers have developed a treatment called chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, known as CAR-T therapy for short. In this approach, a patient’s T cells – a type of immune cell that fights pathogens and cancer – are removed and genetically engineered to better recognize cancer before being returned to the body.

CAR-T therapy involves engineering a patient’s own T cells to attack their cancer.

National Cancer Institute (NCI) You can think of these engineered cells as highly trained fighters with the ability to identify cancer cells through the equivalent of specialized night vision goggles and training on how to recognize the headquarters of cancer cells.

CAR-T therapy has been highly effective in some blood cancers, particularly when the tumor microenvironment or bloodstream is shared by both normal immune cells and blood cancer cells. But it has faced difficulty treating solid tumors because the tumor microenvironment has been a major obstacle for T cells to gain entry.

Molecular improvised explosive devices But entering the cancer is only part of the challenge. Once inside, CAR-T cells encounter a hostile tumor environment filled with molecules that can weaken or disable them. Some of these molecules act like roadblocks, slowing immune cells down.

Others behave like misleading traffic signs, sending confusing instructions. Some can attach to CAR-T cells and disrupt their ability to wield their weapon and attack the cancer cells. In many cases, the cancer deprives CAR-T cells of the energy they need by designing a tortuous roadway to get into their neighborhood.

One key molecule involved in blocking CAR-T cells is called galectin-3.

Cancers can release this protein into the tumor microenvironment, where the molecule attaches to the T cells and change their ability to communicate with other cells, confusing the T cells and restricting their ability to survive and kill cancer.

The tumor microenvironmnt is one reason why CAR-T therapy, while powerful, does not always lead to long-lasting responses. The cells may reach the gate and enter the tumor, but they don’t always remain functional long enough in the neighborhood to eliminate cancer cells.

Protecting CAR-T cells in tumors How can researchers help CAR-T cells survive the tumor microenvironment? One way is to protect the outer sugar coat of CAR-T cells and prevent galectin-3 from binding to it. Our team has developed a way to instruct CAR-T cells to make a new sugar coat that can ward off galectin-3.

This concept of targeting sugar molecules in drug development is called glycoengineering. Every cell in the body is coated with sugar molecules called glycans. You can think of it as a coat that cells can change depending on the environment.

These sugars play an important role in controlling how cells interact with their surroundings. CAR-T cells have a peculiarly sticky sugar coat that makes them particularly vulnerable to molecules like galectin-3.

Researchers are devising several ways to target the sugars on cancer cells, including A) antibodies that recognize those sugar molecules and recruit immune cells to destroy tumor cells, B) CAR-T cells engineered to target the sugar signature marking cancer cells, and C) other immune cells that directly recognize these sugar signatures and destroy cancer cells.

Mantuano et al/Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, CC BY-NC-SA Our team genetically modified the sugar layer on CAR-T cells to change how they behave in the tumor microenvironment. We added genes into CAR-T cells that change the types of sugars they produce for their coats, better camouflaging them against galactin-3.

Because glycoengineered CAR-T cells can better resist galectin-3’s ability to shut down their cancer killing, they can maintain their function longer and communicate with each other better in the tumor microenvironment. This longer, more persistent form of CAR-T cell therapy can help prevent tumors from developing resistance against them.

Resilience over brute strength While researchers still don’t completely understand how tumors regulate their neighborhoods and restrict immune cells from coming in, addressing these weaknesses points to future solutions for cancer. Instead of making immune cells more powerful, scientists are seeking ways to make them more resilient.

Helping immune cells adapt to cancer’s ecosystem could extend their effectiveness and improve patient outcomes. Glycoengineering also reflects a broader shift in cancer research. The focus is no longer just on attacking cancer cells directly, but also navigating the tumor microenvironment in order to protect immune cells in their mission to kill cancer cells.

In the future, we believe the most effective cancer treatments may not be the strongest, but the ones best equipped to operate within the gated community that tumors create.

Charles J.

Dimitroff receives funding from NIH/National Cancer Institute.

Lee Seng Lau received funding from the Janssen Scholars of Oncology Diversity Engagement Program, the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship, and the Florida International University Graduate School.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/killing-cancer-requires-immune-cells-to-infiltrate-tumors-hostile-microenvironment-sugar-shields-can-help-them-break-in/

The White House addresses the need to protect against powerful AI systems. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Some technology and policy watchers were surprised when President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 2, 2026, establishing a framework for AI security.

It seemed to move in a different direction from a December 2025 executive order that sought to create a “minimally burdensome” national framework for artificial intelligence and supersede state laws the administration saw as restrictive. The new executive order focuses on using AI to boost the security of federal and private computer systems.

It also aims to ensure that the federal government has access to major new AI models before they are released to the public, to determine if they pose a threat. However, the order’s provisions relating to the AI industry are voluntary, and it explicitly prohibits interpreting its provisions as authorizing “a mandatory governmental licensing, pre-clearance, or permitting requirement” for new AI models.

As a professor who studies responsible AI, the questions the executive order raises for me are how its new reporting structure changes the governance of AI safety, and whether the order reflects what AI safety experts see as best practices.

Potential for harm The executive order expresses concern about AI systems that can discover software vulnerabilities and write malicious code to exploit them. It directs various government secretaries to enact cyber defenses for federal systems.

It also establishes an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse in voluntary collaboration with the AI industry and operators of critical infrastructure to scan for vulnerabilities and distribute fixes.

This approach may be the Trump administration’s response to the April 2026 announcement by Anthropic that its newest version of Claude, called Mythos, autonomously found hundreds of software vulnerabilities in critical systems across the U.S. and crafted attacks against them.

That prompted several large financial institutions to request early access to such models. The executive order directs various high-ranking government officials to develop and maintain a classified process for assessing whether new AI programs should be designated as frontier models, also called foundation models.

In industry parlance, a frontier model is a new, cutting edge AI model trained on massive amounts of data that can reason and autonomously use tools to initiate actions. The latest versions of ChatGPT, Claude, DeepMind and Llama fall into this category.

If a new model meets the frontier criteria, then the developer is supposed to provide the government with access to it at least 30 days before they plan to release the model. It also says developers will collaborate with the federal government to select third parties to preview covered frontier models to assess the risk to the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.

CBS News covers the backstory of President Donald Trump’s decision to sign the executive order.

Voluntary measures AI companies that develop frontier AI models currently share information with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology governed by the Department of Commerce.

According to the International AI safety report, most risk management initiatives around the world are largely voluntary for AI companies. This includes the Frontier AI Safety Frameworks that AI developers consult, the G7 Hiroshima AI Process endorsed by leaders of G7 countries, and the EU Code of Practice followed across Europe.

The new executive order retains the voluntary nature of AI developers reporting potential safety risks. The administration continues to argue that restrictive safety barriers could hamper innovation. However, AI safety pioneers, including Turing Award winners Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, maintain that safety cannot rest solely on corporate self-regulation, because commercial pressures prioritize development speed over risk mitigation.

The International AI Safety Report warns that AI risk management is still immature and that corporate safety measures have to grow with the pace of innovation. This is the so-called “evidence dilemma”: Acting too slowly leaves societies vulnerable.

In creating AI safety standards, industry and government have to specify and agree on what information is required from AI model developers, such as training data and methods, “red team” practices for probing vulnerabilities, and incident reports about model theft.

Addressing the risks Despite its lack of mandatory safety measures for the AI industry, I find it striking that the executive order acknowledges the serious potential for harm posed by AI models. The order is also in line with expert consensus that individual technical safeguards are imperfect and can be bypassed by attackers.

Instead, the order advocates for multiple, overlapping layers of protection, including hardware and computer infrastructure tracking, rigorous testing before deployment, and real-time monitoring.

The order also reflects expert opinion in noting that advanced AI tools have a fundamental duality: They can transform disciplines ranging from healthcare to defense, but they can also enable malicious hackers and cybercriminals, pose societal harms and threaten national defense.

Beyond national AI safety International cooperation is also fundamental to AI safety. For instance, Argentina has created nonhuman corporations run entirely by AI agents. How much safety does the new executive order provide in a world where models can be deployed from anywhere?

The order makes no mention of multilateral coordination, allied engagement or globally shared governance. Indeed, the order’s purpose is to “cultivate America’s advanced AI-enabled capabilities” as a competitive national asset. Bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency can serve as models for an international consensus on AI safety.

The existing AI Safety Summit process, which held summits in the U.K. in 2023; South Korea in 2024; France in 2025; and India in 2026, is the closest approximation in practice. It involves a network of government AI safety institutes, including from the U.S. and Europe.

It holds summits every six to 12 months. Such independent, expert-led bodies could also shape expectations about protocols and norms related to AI risk. The executive order represents a first step in acknowledging some of the AI safety risks for national security.

Moving forward, I believe it is important for the U.S. government to connect such efforts with broader, independent and scientific approaches to identify and counter threats from AI.

Anjana Susarla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/trumps-ai-security-order-acknowledges-risks-but-stops-short-of-regulating-industry/

For cities like Pittsburgh and many others in the United States, population growth is actually unlikely. espiegle/iStock via Getty Images Plus Few city planning concepts are as sacrosanct as the idea that growth is good and decline is bad.

For cities and counties, population growth is universally seen as a metric that defines success. Even stable population trends can be cast as stagnation to be avoided at all costs. The Pittsburgh region illustrates the problem with that thinking.

Between 2020 and 2025 the city of Pittsburgh added more than 4,500 residents – the highest numerical gain of any municipality in Pennsylvania, and its first sustained growth in roughly 70 years. That’s a success story, if you keep your focus narrowed on Pittsburgh.

But that optimistic view falls apart if you zoom out to the eight-county metro area: The region lost nearly 35,000 residents over the same period. Growth concentrated in a few communities is complemented by declines elsewhere.

The painful demographic reality is that for an ever-growing number of places in the United States, population growth is slowing. Must that mean the region’s communities are failing to compete for residents and businesses?

I’m an economist at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the new book “Beyond Steel: Pittsburgh and the Economics of Transformation.” My research focuses on how cities adapt – or fail to – when population and economic growth no longer follow the patterns they once did.

When steel towns shrink Two decades ago the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, Jay Williams, garnered national attention by pushing policies that accepted the city’s population would never return to its former peak. He made that shift a quarter-century after Black Monday, when over 5,000 steelworkers were laid off on Sept.

19, 1977. At the turn of the century, Youngstown was still experiencing ongoing deindustrialization and depopulation. Williams argued that facing that reality honestly was the only way to build a new future, a concept sometimes called managed decline.

Youngstown is one of the Rust Belt communities experiencing chronic population decline. AP Photo/Tony Dejak Youngstown was simply ahead of a large group of Rust Belt communities that would experience chronic population declines over the next 25 years.

Communities such as Braddock, Pennsylvania, where Andrew Carnegie built his first steel plant in the 1870s, went from a peak of more than 20,000 residents in the 1920s to less than 2,000 today. Despite such evidence that past population peaks are likely never to return for certain communities, the idea of a city planning for anything other than growth is almost unthinkable in public discourse.

Yet, there is no clear connection between growth and community prosperity. Many places across the U.S. and the world sustain quality of life and attract new investment while experiencing little or no population growth.

Burlington, Vermont, is slow-growing yet consistently ranks high for livability and attracts significant investment relative to its size. Globally, Zurich and Vienna are also slow-growing but perennially top quality-of-life and investment rankings. It may even be that planning for growth that is unlikely to happen works against the goals of building a successful community.

Planning for the present These ideas are not new. More than two decades ago, economist Paul Gottlieb articulated the case for “Growth Without Growth,” arguing that population growth is not a useful measure of community success.

What was once a distant warning has become a present reality for a growing number of communities. New census data estimates over 41% of the nation’s 3,144 counties experienced outright population declines between 2020 and 2025. Of the 485 municipalities across the Pittsburgh metro region, 71% lost residents over the same period.

These losses were concentrated in the older industrial towns of the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio river valleys, where natural population decline, limited housing investment and decades of emigration continue to occur. Meanwhile, what growth exists is clustered along the I-79 corridor in Butler and Washington counties, a geographic pattern that reflects suburban expansion more than regional resurgence.

Population growth in the Pittsburgh metro area can be attributed to suburban expansion. The Good Brigade/Digital Vision Collection via Getty Images Communities can and, I believe, must adapt. In his recent book, “Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: Learning to Thrive Without Growth,” urbanist Alan Mallach examines the challenges facing places that can no longer count on growth.

Planning and economic development will mean something different in that world. For many communities, minimal growth or even modest decline will be the baseline. Mallach advocates for a shift in thinking about how local economies connect to the broader forces around them.

He argues that declining population can also be an opportunity to green the urban environment and address housing shortages. Global problem, local solutions Managed decline is the honest recognition that a community’s best future may look different from its past.

It shows that planning around realistic economic and population trends is the most sustainable path forward. The United States is not alone in facing this reality. Germany, facing the rapid depopulation of its eastern states after reunification in 1990, became perhaps the world’s most deliberate laboratory for managed decline policy.

Through the national Stadtumbau Ost program, launched in 2002, the federal government funded the systematic demolition of surplus housing and the conversion of vacated urban land into parks and green infrastructure, explicitly reshaping cities around actual population rather than projected future growth.

Despite clear demographic trends, it remains unheard of for most local U.S. leaders to advocate for policies that plan for managed decline. Any political leader who did would likely face backlash. But the public needs an honest picture of what future growth and decline will look like and how different it may be from the past.

In many communities or regions, growth will be possible only at the expense of greater decline elsewhere. Communities that face these trends will need to work together rather than compete. None of this is to argue that Pittsburgh and other communities should not work to improve the quality of life for their residents, which, if successful, can generate population gains in the future.

But for an ever-larger number of regions, and especially for the bulk of communities across southwestern Pennsylvania, those potential population gains will be ever more constrained and harder to sustain.

Christopher Briem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/most-pittsburgh-area-communities-are-losing-residents-heres-why-that-might-be-ok/

Fred Ngusilo, left, a member of the Ogiek community, works with a relative to sift through the ruins of their grandfather’s house in the Mau forest, destroyed by Kenyan police.

Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images Imagine living in the same forest as your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and all your ancestors as far back in time as stories can tell, and depending on the forest for food, shelter, recreation and education.

Imagine, then, that the forest depends on you, too, because you and your people have protected it for generations. Then, along come government officials who tell you what you already know: The forest is precious, an environmental and ecological gem that should be preserved.

And then they tell you that to protect it, you all have to leave. That’s the latest reason given in a series of efforts to evict the Ogiek people, an Indigenous group of hunter-gatherers in the Mau forest of East Africa.

For more than a century, British colonial authorities and, later, Kenyan government officials, have all sought to evict the people who have lived there since time immemorial. And in 2017 the Ogieks won a landmark court case before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which recognized their legal right to the land.

But in 2023, Kenya’s government began evicting them again, citing a new justification.

The government wants to preserve the forest undisturbed, as a commercial resource in global markets for carbon credits, a system in which companies can claim they are doing no harm to the climate even while continuing to emit greenhouse gases that are raising global temperatures and changing the climate.

Instead, they purchase credits to support the absorption from the atmosphere of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide, such as by trees. This story is still unfolding. And the Ogiek are not the only Indigenous group experiencing this type of pressure in a pattern that extends well beyond Kenya.

The Ogiek people seek to protect the forest that has been their home for centuries and generations.

As countries, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world seek to protect land, conserving precious environmental resources and reducing the effects of climate change, the communities most likely to be displaced are the Indigenous people who have lived there for generations.

The Indigenous people involved often find they are left out of the planning process and have few legal options available to defend the homes they and their ancestors have cared for over thousands of years.

I am a researcher and consultant working on how Indigenous peoples and their land rights are affected, and often undermined, by outside interventions. I have seen that there is one principle designed to ensure Indigenous people are included in decisions about their land.

From East Africa to Central Asia, the principle exists, but it is almost entirely unenforceable.

A right without teeth Under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted in 2007, Indigenous communities have a recognized right to be meaningfully consulted before anything is done to the lands where they live.

This principle has a name: “free, prior and informed consent.” This right means Indigenous groups must be told what governments or corporations want to happen on their lands and why, and must be given the chance to object or propose changes.

And the final approval for whatever might happen must come voluntarily from those Indigenous people.

The principle of free, prior and informed consent was developed after decades of documented harm to Indigenous people by governments and companies that ignored their long-term presence on the land and their perspective on its use.

But it is a principle, not an enforceable law or regulation in most countries. So, many governments and corporations have interpreted the principle loosely, or even disregarded it entirely. Often they just tell a few representatives of an Indigenous group what’s about to happen, sharing key details too late for any opposition or revision.

That’s what happened to the Ogieks in 2023: The Kenyan government decided it wanted to preserve the forest and told the people to leave, again. Kenyatta Ngusilo, a member of the Ogiek community, salvages what was left after his storehouse was burned down by Kenyan police in Sasimwani, in the Mau forest.

James Wakibia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Other decisions without consent Something similar happened in the Arctic between 2008 and 2025. The Arctic Ice Project, initially called ICE911, was a nonprofit organization founded to find ways to reflect sunlight away from the Earth’s surface and slow the melting of Arctic ice.

The effort decided to focus on spreading tiny reflective silica microspheres on the ice. The project was ultimately discontinued because of concerns it could harm the algae and plankton that form the base of the Arctic food chain, which sustains both wildlife and Indigenous communities in the region.

But since its beginning, the effort had been opposed by the local Indigenous people, who said they were excluded from discussions.

One Indigenous leader told me: “Involvement doesn’t mean … a predetermined intervention, (with the organization) inviting us to a restaurant of their choosing, eating a meal they ordered to discuss our future. … We warned them about the potential impacts, and after all that, they want to hire us as consultants for a predetermined intervention.

And they told us to set our price.” The leader’s point was simple: What was being offered wasn’t consent and meaningful consultation. The proposal from the Arctic Ice Project was essentially a fee to sign off on a plan that had never really been open to change or input from the Indigenous people.

Some research also highlights that community-led conservation projects are more effective because Indigenous peoples are not relics of the past, but rather are active, present-day stewards with dynamic and sophisticated knowledge systems rooted in their relationship with their land.

The Ogiek community has fought in courts for their rights over many years. James Wakibia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Competing interests What connects these cases is not malice. Governments, corporations and nongovernmental organizations all operate in competitive environments where financial pressures and inadequate regulations can push social and environmental considerations to the margins.

That means the people with the most direct relationship to the land are often the last to be consulted about what happens to it. The principle of free, prior and informed consent was designed specifically to break that pattern.

But as long as it remains a principle rather than an enforceable obligation, I worry that meaningful consultation will continue to be replaced by the appearance of it, in the form of a meeting that’s held too late, a document signed by the wrong people, or a consulting fee offered to approve a decision that had already been made.

Some countries have ratified the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, agreed in 1989, which contains this principle. Some countries, including the Philippines, Colombia and Peru, include the principle in their national laws.

But other countries have not made so formal a commitment, and still others, including the U.S., have not ratified the international agreement in the first place.

In my view, not until the communities it was designed to protect are brought in at the beginning, as decision-makers with veto power, will the principle achieve its goal.

Buket Altınçelep does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/efforts-to-combat-climate-change-often-exclude-indigenous-people-and-they-may-not-have-any-recourse/

It’s official: El Niño is back. By late fall 2026, forecast models give a 2-in-3 chance of a strong-to-very strong El Niño affecting the weather, climate and ocean temperatures across the planet. El Niño is the climate system’s biggest player and one side of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

It’s the heads to La Niña’s tails. During El Niño, a swath of ocean stretching 6,000 miles (about 10,000 kilometers) westward off the coast of Ecuador warms for months on end, typically by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius).

A few degrees may not seem like much, but in that part of the world, it’s more than enough to completely reorganize wind, rainfall and temperature patterns all over the planet. Marine heat waves can trigger coral bleaching.

Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images I’m a climate scientist who studies the oceans. With an El Niño expected to strengthen through the summer and fall, water temperatures will heat up even more. It’s time to start preparing.

How does El Niño affect the planet? No two El Niño events are exactly alike, though we’ve seen enough of them that forecasters have a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen.

People tend to focus on El Niño’s impact on land, justifiably. The warm water affects air currents that leave areas wetter or drier than usual. It can ramp up storms in some areas, like the southern U.S., while tending to tamp down Atlantic hurricane activity.

How El Niño forms. NOAA. El Niño can also wreak havoc on the many marine ecosystems that support the world’s fishing industries, including coral reefs and seagrass meadows. Specifically, El Niño tends to trigger intense and widespread periods of extreme ocean warming known as marine heat waves.

Global ocean temperatures are already near record highs, so El Niño-induced marine heat waves could push many sensitive fisheries to a breaking point. What is a marine heat wave? A marine heat wave is just that: a “wave” of extreme heat in the ocean, not dissimilar to an atmospheric heat wave on land.

At their smallest, marine heat waves can inundate local bays and coves with hotter-than-normal water for a few days or weeks.

At their largest, marine heat waves like the Northeast Pacific Warm Blob of 2013-2014 can grow to gargantuan proportions, with regions three times the size of Texas experiencing ocean temperatures 4 to 6 F (about 2 to 3 C) above average for months or even years.

Warm water might not seem like a big deal, especially to surfers hoping to leave their wetsuits at home. But for many marine organisms that are highly adapted to specific water temperatures, marine heat waves can make living in the ocean feel like running a marathon.

For example, some fish increase their metabolism in warm waters by so much that they burn energy faster than they can eat, and they can die. Pacific cod declined by 70% in the Gulf of Alaska in response to a marine heat wave.

Other impacts include bleached corals, widespread harmful algal blooms, decimated seaweeds and increased marine mammal strandings. All told, billions of U.S. dollars are lost to marine heat waves each year. Marine heat waves flare up for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes, ocean currents shift warm water around. Sometimes, surface winds are weaker than normal, leading to less evaporation over the ocean and warmer waters. Sometimes, cloudy places just aren’t as cloudy for a few months, which lets more sunlight in and heats up the ocean.

Sometimes, both weaker winds and fewer clouds happen at the same time, producing record-breaking marine heat waves. How does El Niño fit in? In the climate system, El Niño is king. When it dons its fiery crown, the entire planet takes notice, and the oceans are no exception.

But the likelihood of increased marine heat wave activity during El Niño depends on where you are. Along the U.S. West Coast during El Niño, surface winds that normally blow from the north tend to subside.

This weakens evaporation and slows upwelling of colder, deeper water. That increases the chances of coastal marine heat waves. California waters are already extremely warm. El Niño could make things even hotter for longer.

Peruvian fishers have for centuries weathered periods of extreme ocean warming that drive fish away. It wasn’t until the 1920s that scientists realized that these South American marine heat waves were related to the Pacific-wide ENSO.

In the Bay of Bengal east of India, interactions between El Niño and a tropical air flow pattern known as the Walker Circulation elevate the risk for marine heat waves. Seafloor heat waves are another risk Even if marine heat waves aren’t obvious at the ocean surface, that doesn’t mean all is well down below.

In a 2023 study, my colleagues and I showed that marine heat waves also unfold along the seafloor of coastal regions. In fact, these “bottom marine heat waves” are sometimes more intense than their surface counterparts.

They can also persist much longer. For example, a 1997-1998 bottom marine heat wave off the U.S. West Coast lasted an extra four to five months after surface ocean temperatures had already cooled. Events like this can be related to El Niño and put a lot of stress on bottom-dwelling species.

Bering Sea snow crab landings were down 84% in 2018 after a marine heat wave reached the seafloor. We’re in (for) hot water With El Niño on the horizon, what can we expect for this year?

The good news is seasonal forecast models can skillfully predict marine heat waves three to six months in advance, depending on the region. And forecasts tend to be most accurate during El Niño years.

Marine heat wave forecasts from May 2026 show the probability, left, based on the North American Multi-Model Ensemble, and magnitude, right, of marine heat waves expected in 2026 and early 2027. Marine heat waves were already developing off the Pacific Coasts of North, Central and South America as of June 2026.

NOAA The latest forecast predicts several marine heat waves developing as El Niño ramps up, with damaging heat reaching close to half the global ocean by the end of 2026. The California and Mexican coasts in particular have a very high likelihood of strong marine heat waves, and the Indian Ocean and parts of the Southern Ocean are also likely to see damaging heat.

These predictions are far enough out that conditions could change. Time will tell whether they hold (hot) water, but we would do well to prepare.

This article incorporates details from an article originally published April 18, 2023.

Dillon Amaya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/12/el-nino-is-back-and-ocean-temperatures-are-already-near-record-highs-that-can-spell-disaster-for-fish-and-corals/