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Category: The Conversation

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Critical minerals don’t belong in landfills – microwave tech offers a cleaner way to reclaim them from e-waste

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Terence Musho, Associate Professor of Engineering, West Virginia University

    Broken electronics still contain valuable critical minerals. Beeldbewerking/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    When the computer or phone you’re using right now blinks its last blink and you drop it off for recycling, do you know what happens?

    At the recycling center, powerful magnets will pull out steel. Spinning drums will toss aluminum into bins. Copper wires will get neatly bundled up for resale. But as the conveyor belt keeps rolling, tiny specks of valuable, lesser-known materials such as gallium, indium and tantalum will be left behind.

    Those tiny specks are critical materials. They’re essential for building new technology, and they’re in short supply in the U.S. They could be reused, but there’s a problem: Current recycling methods make recovering critical minerals from e-waste too costly or hazardous, so many recyclers simply skip them.

    Sadly, most of these hard-to-recycle materials end up buried in landfills or get mixed into products like cement. But it doesn’t have to be this way. New technology is starting to make a difference.

    A treasure trove of critical materials is often overlooked in e-waste, including gallium in LEDs, indium in LCDs, and tantalum in surface mount capacitors.
    Ansan Pokharel/West Virginia University, CC BY

    As demand for these critical materials keeps growing, discarded electronics can become valuable resources. My colleagues and I at West Virginia University are developing a new technology to change how we recycle. Instead of using toxic chemicals, our approach uses electricity, making it safer, cleaner and more affordable to recover critical materials from electronics.

    How much e-waste are we talking about?

    Americans generated about 2.7 million tons of electronic waste in 2018, according to the latest federal data. Including uncounted electronics, a survey by the United Nations suggests that the U.S. recycles only about 15% of its total e-waste.

    Even worse, nearly half the electronics that people in Northern America sent to recycling centers end up shipped overseas. They often land in scrapyards, where workers may use dangerous methods like burning or leaching using harsh chemicals to pull out valuable metals. These practices can harm both the environment and workers’ health. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency restricts these methods in the U.S.

    The tiny specks matter

    Critical minerals are in most of the technology around you. Every phone screen has a super-thin layer of a material called indium tin oxide. LEDs glow because of a metal called gallium. Tantalum stores energy in tiny electronic parts called capacitors.

    All of these materials are flagged as “high risk” on the U.S. Department of Energy’s critical materials list. That means the U.S. relies heavily on these materials for important technologies, but their supply could be easily disrupted by conflicts, trade disputes or shortages.

    Right now, just a few countries, including China, control most of the mining, processing and recovery of these materials, making the U.S. vulnerable if those countries decide to limit exports or raise prices.

    These materials aren’t cheap, either. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey reports that gallium was priced between US$220 to $500 per kilogram in 2024. That’s 50 times more expensive than common metals like copper, at $9.48 per kilogram in 2024.

    Revolutionizing recycling with microwaves

    At West Virginia University’s Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, I and materials scientist Edward Sabolsky asked a simple question: Could we find a way to heat only specific parts of electronic waste to recover these valuable materials?

    If we could focus the heat on just the tiny specks of critical minerals, we might be able to recycle them easily and efficiently.

    The solution we found: microwaves.

    This equipment isn’t very different from the microwave ovens you use to heat food at home, just bigger and more powerful. The basic science is the same – electromagnetic waves cause electrons to oscillate, creating heat.

    In our approach, though, we’re not heating water molecules like you do when cooking. Instead, we heat carbon, the black residue that collects around a candle flame or car tailpipe. Carbon heats up much faster in a microwave than water does. But don’t try this at home; your kitchen microwave wasn’t designed for such high temperatures.

    West Virginia University researchers are using this experimental microwave reactor to recycle critical materials from end-of-life electronics.
    Ansan Pokharel/West Virginia University, CC BY

    In our recycling method, we first shred the electronic waste, mix it with materials called fluxes that trap impurities, and then heat the mixture with microwaves. The microwaves rapidly heat the carbon that comes from the plastics and adhesives in the e-waste. This causes the carbon to react with the tiny specks of critical materials. The result: a tiny piece of pure, sponge-like metal about the size of a grain of rice.

    This metal can then be easily separated from leftover waste using filters.

    So far, in our laboratory tests, we have successfully recovered about 80% of the gallium, indium and tantalum from e-waste, at purities between 95% and 97%. We have also demonstrated how it can be integrated with existing recycling processes.

    Why the Department of Defense is interested

    Our recycling technology got its start with help from a program funded by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

    Many important technologies, from radar systems to nuclear reactors, depend on these special materials. While the Department of Defense uses less of them than the commercial market, they are a national security concern.

    We’re planning to launch larger pilot projects next to test the method on smartphone circuit boards, LED lighting parts and server cards from data centers. These tests will help us fine-tune the design for a bigger system that can recycle tons of e-waste per hour instead of just a few pounds. That could mean producing up to 50 pounds of these critical minerals per hour from every ton of e-waste processed.

    If the technology works as expected, we believe this approach could help meet the nation’s demand for critical materials.

    How to make e-waste recycling common

    One way e-waste recycling could become more common is if Congress held electronics companies responsible for recycling their products and recovering the critical materials inside. Closing loopholes that allow companies to ship e-waste overseas, instead of processing it safely in the U.S., could also help build a reserve of recovered critical minerals.

    But the biggest change may come from simple economics. Once technology becomes available to recover these tiny but valuable specks of critical materials quickly and affordably, the U.S. can transform domestic recycling and take a big step toward solving its shortage of critical materials.

    Terence Musho has received funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

    – ref. Critical minerals don’t belong in landfills – microwave tech offers a cleaner way to reclaim them from e-waste – https://theconversation.com/critical-minerals-dont-belong-in-landfills-microwave-tech-offers-a-cleaner-way-to-reclaim-them-from-e-waste-254908

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Public health and private equity: What the Walgreens buyout could mean for the future of pharmacy care

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Patrick Aguilar, Professor of Practice of Organizational Behavior, Washington University in St. Louis

    Pharmacies are more than just stores – they’re vital links between people and their health care.

    One of us, Patrick, witnessed this firsthand in 2003 while working as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens in a midsize West Texas town. Each day involved handling hundreds of prescriptions as they moved through the system – meticulously counting pills, deciphering doctors’ handwriting and sorting out confusing insurance issues. The experience revealed that how pharmacies are owned and managed is as much a public health issue as it is a financial one.

    Fast-forward to today, and Walgreens – one of the world’s largest pharmacy chains, which filled nearly 800 million U.S. prescriptions in 2024 – is at a turning point. In March, the company announced it would be acquired by private equity firm Sycamore Partners for US$10 billion, just 10% of its peak market value. That deal takes the storied pharmacy chain off the public market for the first time in nearly 100 years.

    We’re professors who study the intersection of medicine and business, and we think this deal offers a window into the future of pharmacy care. It matters not just to pharmacists but also to the tens of millions of Americans who rely on outlets like Walgreens to meet their everyday health needs.

    The rise and struggles of Walgreens

    A lot has changed in the pharmacy industry since 1901, when Charles R. Walgreen Sr. purchased the Chicago drugstore where he served as a pharmacist. The company went public in 1927, expanded rapidly throughout the 20th century and grew to 8,000 stores by 2013. By 2014, a merger with the European pharmacy chain Alliance Boots made Walgreens one of the largest pharmacy chains in the world.

    More recently, however, the picture for the pharmacy industry hasn’t been so rosy. Labor costs have risen. Front-end retail sales – things like snacks, greeting cards and cosmetics – have fallen. And financial pressures from pharmacy benefit managers – those third-party groups that manage the cost of prescription drug benefits on the behalf of insurers – have grown.

    All of these things have significantly constrained revenues across the industry, leading stores to shutter. Some estimates suggest that as many as one-third of U.S. retail pharmacies have closed since 2010.

    Against that backdrop, Sycamore Partners’ March acquisition of Walgreens raises big questions. What does Sycamore see in this investment, and what might their strategies imply about the future of American pharmacy care?

    Framing the private equity bet

    Private equity firms typically buy companies, streamline their operations and seek to sell them for a profit within five to seven years of the acquisition.

    This growing movement of private equity into the global economy is by no means limited to health care. In 2020, private equity firms employed 11.7 million U.S. workers, or about 7% of the country’s total workforce. The total assets under management by such investors have grown by over 11% annually over the past two decades, a trend that’s expected to continue.

    In looking at Walgreens, Sycamore, like many of these businesses, likely sees an opportunity to buy low, cut costs and improve profitability. One survey of private equity investors found that the most common self-reported sources of value creation in these deals for companies of Sycamore’s size were changing the product and marketing it more robustly to drive demand, changing incentives for those within the business, and facilitating a high-value exit.

    While private owners may have more patience than public markets, critics argue that private equity firms tend to have a short-term focus, looking for quick, predictable services of margin improvement – like, for example, cutting jobs.

    There’s some evidence in favor of that claim. One study found that employment often drops in the years following a private equity buyout. And if the focus shifts to repaying debt or prepping for resale, long-term projects, such as investing in future innovation, can get deprioritized.

    The history of privatized public companies offers a mix of successes and failures. Dell Technologies and hotel chain Hilton are two prominent examples of companies that went private, restructured successfully and came back stronger. In those cases, going private helped management focus without the constant pressure of quarterly earnings reports.

    On the other hand, companies such as Toys R Us, which was taken private in 2005 and filed for bankruptcy in 2018, show how high debt and missed innovation can lead to collapse.

    What’s next for Walgreens

    So, where does this leave Walgreens − and the investors involved in the deal?

    If part of the returns will be driven by “buying low” – the easiest indicator of potential future success to measure as of today – Sycamore started well: Its purchase price represents a mere 8% premium over the market trading value on the day of the announcement, significantly less than the 46% seen across industries in 2023. That said, Sycamore financed 83.4% of the purchase with debt, a number on the high end for these kinds of transactions. Health care groups have pointed to this number while raising concerns that innovation-focused investments may take a back seat to debt obligations.

    As the dust settles on the purchase, Sycamore has indicated an interest in splitting Walgreens into three business units: one focused on U.S. pharmacies, one on U.K. pharmacies and one on U.S. primary health care through its VillageMD subsidiary.

    That’s not unusual: Sycamore has used a similar approach before with its investment in the office supply retailer Staples, a strategy that has garnered strong financial returns but been called into question for its long-term sustainability.

    Given the significant financial challenges VillageMD has faced since its acquisition by Walgreens, this represents an opportunity to separately evaluate and optimize its performance. Meanwhile, Sycamore’s historic focus on retail and customer-focused businesses might help it modernize the in-store experience or optimize staffing.

    For more than a century, Walgreens has survived and adapted to sweeping changes in retail. Now, it’s entering a new chapter – one that could reshape not just its own future but the role of pharmacies in American life.

    Will Sycamore help Walgreens thrive, using its resources to strengthen services and deliver more value to customers? Or will pressure to generate quick returns create problems? Either way, the answer matters – not just for investors but for anyone who’s ever relied on their neighborhood pharmacy to stay healthy.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Public health and private equity: What the Walgreens buyout could mean for the future of pharmacy care – https://theconversation.com/public-health-and-private-equity-what-the-walgreens-buyout-could-mean-for-the-future-of-pharmacy-care-253598

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Smartphones are once again setting the agenda for justice as the Latino community documents ICE actions

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Allissa V. Richardson, Associate Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

    Smartphone witnessing helped spur the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Ethan Swope

    It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood outside Cup Foods, raised her phone and bore witness to nine minutes and 29 seconds that would galvanize a global movement against racial injustice.

    Frazier’s video didn’t just show what happened. It insisted the world stop and see.

    Today, that legacy continues in the hands of a different community, facing different threats but wielding the same tools. Across the United States, Latino organizers are raising their phones, not to go viral but to go on record. They livestream Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, film family separations and document protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not merely content. It is evidence, warning – and resistance.

    Here in Los Angeles where I teach journalism, for example, several images have seared themselves into public memory. One viral video shows a shackled father stepping into a white, unmarked van as his daughter sobs behind the camera, pleading with him not to sign any official documents. He turns, gestures for her to calm down, and blows her a kiss. In another video, filmed across town, Los Angeles Police Department officers on horseback charge into crowds of peaceful protesters, swinging wooden batons with chilling precision.

    In Spokane, Washington, residents form a spontaneous human chain around their neighbors mid-raid, their bodies and cameras erecting a barricade of defiance. In San Diego, a video shows white allies yelling “Shame!” as they chase a car full of National Guard troops from their neighborhood.

    The impact of smartphone witnessing has been immediate and unmistakable – visceral at street level, seismic in statehouses. On the ground, the videos helped inspire a “No Kings” movement, which organized protests in all 50 states on June 14, 2025.

    Lawmakers are intensifying their focus on immigration policy as well. As the Trump administration escalates enforcement, Democratic-led states are expanding laws that limit cooperation with federal agents. On June 12, the House Oversight Committee questioned Democratic governors about these measures, with Republican lawmakers citing public safety concerns. The hearing underscored deep divisions between federal and state approaches to immigration enforcement.

    The legacy of Black witnessing

    What’s unfolding now is not new – it is newly visible. As my research shows, Latino organizers are drawing from a playbook that was sharpened in 2020 and rooted in a much older lineage of Black media survival strategies that were forged under extreme oppression.

    In my 2020 book “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest Journalism,” I document how Black Americans have used media – slave narratives, pamphlets, newspapers, radio and now smartphones – to fight for justice. From Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells to Darnella Frazier, Black witnesses have long used journalism as a tool for survival and transformation.

    Latino mobile journalists are building on that blueprint in 2025, filming state power in moments of overreach, archiving injustice in real time, and expanding the impact of this radical tradition.

    Their work also echoes the spatial tactics of Black resistance. Just as enslaved Black people once mapped escape routes during slavery and Jim Crow, Latino communities today are engaging in digital cartography to chart ICE-free zones, mutual aid hubs and sanctuary spaces. The People Over Papers map channels the logic of the Black maroons – communities of self-liberated Africans who escaped plantations to track patrols, share intelligence and build networks of survival. Now, the hideouts are digital. The maps are crowdsourced. The danger remains.

    Likewise, the Stop ICE Raids Alerts Network revives a civil rights-era tactic. In the 1960s, organizers used wide area telephone service lines and radio to circulate safety updates. Black DJs cloaked dispatches in traffic and weather reports – “congestion on the south side” signaled police blockades; “storm warnings” meant violence ahead. Today, the medium is WhatsApp. The signal is encrypted. But the message – protect each other – has not changed.

    Layered across both systems is the DNA of the “Negro Motorist Green Book,” the guide that once helped Black travelers navigate Jim Crow America by identifying safe towns, gas stations and lodging. People Over Papers and Stop ICE Raids are digital descendants of that legacy. Where the Green Book used printed pages, today’s tools use digital pins. But the mission remains: survival through shared knowledge, protection through mapped resistance.

    The People Over Papers map is a crowdsourced collection of reports of ICE activity across the U.S.
    Screenshot by The Conversation U.S.

    Dangerous necessity

    Five years after George Floyd’s death, the power of visual evidence remains undeniable. Black witnessing laid the groundwork. In 2025, that tradition continues through the lens of Latino mobile journalists, who draw clear parallels between their own community’s experiences and those of Black Americans. Their footage exposes powerful echoes: ICE raids and overpolicing, border cages and city jails, a door kicked in at dawn and a knee on a neck.

    Like Black Americans before them, Latino communities are using smartphones to protect, to document and to respond. In cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and El Paso, whispers of “ICE is in the neighborhood” now flash across Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram. For undocumented families, pressing record can mean risking retaliation or arrest. But many keep filming – because what goes unrecorded can be erased.

    What they capture are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader, shared struggle against state violence. And as long as the cameras keep rolling, the stories keep surfacing – illuminated by the glow of smartphone screens that refuse to look away.

    Allissa V. Richardson receives funding from the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

    – ref. Smartphones are once again setting the agenda for justice as the Latino community documents ICE actions – https://theconversation.com/smartphones-are-once-again-setting-the-agenda-for-justice-as-the-latino-community-documents-ice-actions-258980

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Metro Detroit is growing – but its suburbs are telling a more complicated story

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Grigoris Argeros, Professor of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University

    Detroit is still a majority Black city, but the share of white, Asian and Hispanic residents is growing. DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

    Following decades of population loss, Detroit may finally be turning a corner.

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent estimates, the city saw an increase in population for both 2023 and 2024.

    An additional 11,000 people moved into the city in the years 2023 and 2024, a small gain in a city with a population of 645,705 – but one which marked a symbolic shift.

    The census data shows just over 1% growth in the past year alone and 0.7% the year before compared with a nearly 25% loss between 2000 and 2010.

    As an urban sociologist studying issues related to race and ethnicity, I am interested in how Detroit’s population is changing, and where different groups live in both the city and its suburbs.

    Analyzing population trends in the metro Detroit area using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, I wanted to understand how racial, ethnic and socioeconomic trends are unfolding, and what those changes can tell us about the evolution and vitality of Detroit.

    Black Detroiters relocate, city diversifies

    From 2010 to 2023, Detroit’s racial and ethnic makeup continued to gradually diversify even as the city was declining in population.

    While Black residents are still the majority, their proportion of the total number fell from around 84% to 79%.

    Other groups, in contrast, increased their share of the city’s population. Between 2010 and 2023, the percentage of Hispanic residents grew from 6.6% to 8.3%, the percentage of white residents grew from 8.2% to 10.7%, and the percentage of Asian residents grew from 1.3% to 1.7%.

    These shifts reflect a steady and ongoing diversification of Detroit’s population, indicative of new migration trends and shifting neighborhood dynamics.

    Suburbs in flux

    In addition to Detroit’s recent population growth, a broader story is unfolding in the city’s suburbs.

    The population of the suburban area as a whole increased 0.73% from 2023 to 2024, but growth was not evenly spread. Collectively, the outer-ring suburbs gained almost 20,000 people, increasing by 1%. Communities such as the city of Troy and Macomb Township accounted for a significant share of that growth.

    A map of Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, with shading to indicate which areas are considered to be the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ suburbs.
    Grigoris Argeros, CC BY

    Inner-ring suburbs, such as Southfield, Warren and others, grew less vigorously – gaining just 4,000 people, or 0.31%.

    These differences highlight the necessity of complicating the conventional city-versus-suburb narrative to acknowledge the many economic and racial divisions across the metropolitan region.

    The socioeconomic statuses of residents of the inner- and outer-ring suburbs diverged between 2000 and 2020.

    My analysis of census data shows that although both subregions witnessed increases in median household incomes, the rates of change were significantly higher in the outer-ring suburbs, with a 37.7% increase versus a 16.8% increase in the inner rings.

    The data shows a similar trend in higher education attainment. Outer ring suburbs gained 7.1% more residents with college degrees or higher during this period, while the inner suburbs lost 7.5%.

    Homeownership patterns in the two suburban regions also diverged over those two decades, increasing 18% in the outer rings and decreasing 10% in the inner rings.

    The data on poverty and immigration also reveal contrasting results.

    According to my calculations of census data, inner-ring suburbs experienced a 77% increase in poverty, while the outer ring experienced a lesser, though considerable, 50.8% bump in poverty during the 2000-2020 period.

    Meanwhile, during the same time period, the foreign-born populations in the outer suburbs expanded by 24.9%, with increases of at least 10,000 in places such as Sterling Heights, Novi and Canton. In contrast, the inner suburbs saw more modest gains — around 5,000 in cities such as Dearborn Heights and Warren — while their overall foreign-born share declined by nearly 20%.

    Together, the above trends highlight the necessity of not viewing the suburban area as a monolith. These patterns reflect national trends, in which many older, inner-ring suburbs are experiencing socioeconomic stagnation or decline while newer, outer-ring suburbs continue to attract more people who have higher incomes.

    Mixed neighborhoods grow

    Residential segregation also differentiates inner and outer suburban rings.

    Segregation levels remain high in the inner suburbs, especially between white and Black residents. While outer suburbs tend to be more integrated today, the rate of change there has been more modest over the past two decades.

    Social scientists measure segregation using a tool called the “dissimilarity index.” The index represents the proportion of one group that would need to move to establish an equal distribution of the population based on their relative numbers. It ranges from 0 to 100. A score of 0 means equal distribution across neighborhoods, while a score of 100 means the two groups live in completely separate areas.

    From 2000 to 2020, white-Black segregation across the region decreased from 84.4% to 68.3% on the index, while white-Hispanic segregation decreased from 47.6% to 39.9%. Together, these numbers indicate a broader trend toward more integrated living patterns.

    In the inner-ring suburbs, segregation fell across the board. White-Black segregation went down by 15.6%; white-Asian and white-Hispanic segregation dropped even more, by 43.2% and 30.7%, respectively.

    These trends suggest that while the outer suburbs currently have lower levels of segregation, the inner suburbs are integrating more rapidly, reflecting shifting patterns of neighborhood change and increasing racial and ethnic diversity.

    Detroit has come a long way since exiting bankruptcy in 2014. Its recent population growth and increasing diversity show important signs of renewal.

    Grigoris Argeros 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.

    – ref. Metro Detroit is growing – but its suburbs are telling a more complicated story – https://theconversation.com/metro-detroit-is-growing-but-its-suburbs-are-telling-a-more-complicated-story-257875

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: US bombs Iran’s nuclear sites: What led to Trump pulling the trigger – and what happens next?

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Javed Ali, Associate Professor of Practice of Public Policy, University of Michigan

    US President Donald Trump addresses the nation on Iran strikes on June 21, 2025 Carlos Barria/AFP via Getty Images

    In the early hours of June 22, 2025, local time, the United States attacked three nuclear facilities in Iran with “bunker buster” bombs and Tomahawk missiles.

    Following more than a week of Israeli strikes on various targets in Iran – which had prompted retaliatory strikes from Tehran – the U.S. move marks a possible inflection point in the conflict. In initial comments on the strikes at the Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz facilities, President Donald Trump said that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and fully obliterated.” In response, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. had “crossed a very big red line.”

    The Conversation U.S. turned to Javed Ali, an expert on Middle East affairs at the University of Michigan and a former senior official at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, to talk through why Trump chose now to act and what the potential repercussions could be.

    What do we know about the nature and timing of US involvement?

    President Trump has been forcefully hinting for days days that such a strike could happen, while at the same time opening up a window of negotiation by suggesting as late as June 20 that he would make a decision “within the next two weeks.” We know Trump can be very unpredictable, but he must have assessed that the current conditions presented an opportunity for U.S. action.

    Trump met with the National Security Council twice in the days leading up to the strike. Typically at such meetings the president is presented with a menu of military options, which usually boil down to three: a narrow option, a middle ground and a “if you really want to go big” strike.

    The one he picked, I would argue, is somewhere between the narrow option and the middle ground one.

    The “go big” options would have been an attack on nuclear sites and Iranian leadership – be that senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, or possibly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The more narrow approach would have been just one facility, likely to have been Fordo – a deeply fortified uranium enrichment site buried within a mountain.

    What did occur was a strike there, but also at two other sites – Isfahan and Natanz.

    U.S. military chiefs confirmed that that 12 GBU-57s – the so-called 30,000-pound bunker busters – were dropped by B-2 bombers on Fordo, and two on Isfahan.

    That suggests to me that the military goal of the operation was to destroy Iran’s ability to produce and or store highly enriched uranium in a one-time strike rather than drag the U.S. into a more prolonged conflict.

    Has the strike achieved Trump’s objectives?

    It will take some time to properly assess the extent to which Iran’s ability to produce or store highly enriched uranium has been damaged.

    Certainly we know that the bombs hit their targets, and they have been damaged – but to what extent is not immediately clear. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that all three target sites had suffered “extremely severe damage and destruction” – possibly rolling back from Trump’s “fully obliterated” assessment. Perhaps most tellingly, Iran has not commented yet on the extent of the damage.

    But to Trump, the objective was not just military but political, too. Trump has long said “no” to a nuclear Iran while at the same time has expressed that he has no desire to drag the U.S. into another war.

    And this strike may allow Trump to achieve those seemingly contradictory goals. If U.S. initial assessments are correct, Iran’s nuclear program will have been severely compromised. But the strikes won’t necessarily pull U.S. into the conflict fully – unless Iran retaliates in such a way that necessitates further U.S. action.

    And that is what Iran’s supreme leader and his military generals will need to work out: Should Iran retaliate and, if so, is it prepared to deal with a heavier U.S. military response – especially when there is no end in sight to its current conflict with Israel.

    An operational timeline of a strike on Iran is displayed during a news conference with U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on June 22, 2025.
    Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    What options does Iran have to retaliate against US?

    Iran has in the past tried to respond proportionately to any attack. But here is the problem for Iran’s leaders: There is no feasible proportionate response to the United States. Iran has no capability to hit nuclear plants in the U.S. – either conventionally or through unconventional warfare.

    But there are tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the region, stationed in Iraq, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Jordan. All are in range of Iran’s ballistic, drones or cruise missiles.

    But that military inventory has been depleted – both by using ballistic missiles in waves of attacks against Israel and by Israel hitting missile launch and storage sites in Iran.

    Similarly, Tehran’s capacity to respond through one of its proxy or aligned groups in the region has been degraded. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Gaza’s Hamas – both of whom have ties to Iran – are in survival mode following damaging attacks from Israel over the past 18 months.

    The Houthis in Yemen are in many ways the “last man standing” in Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance.” But the Houthis have limited capability and know that if they do attack U.S. assets, they will likely get hit hard. During Operation Rough Rider from March to May this year, the Trump administration launched over 1,000 strikes against the Houthis.

    Meanwhile Shia militias in Iraq and Syria that could be encouraged to attack U.S. bases haven’t been active in months.

    Of course, Iran could look outside the region. In the past the country has been involved in assassinations, kidnappings and terror attacks abroad that were organized through its Quds Force or via operatives of MOIS, its intelligence service.

    But for Iran’s leaders, it is increasingly looking like a lose-lose proposition. If they don’t respond in a meaningful way, they look weak and more vulnerable. But if they do hit U.S. targets in any meaningful way, they will invite a stronger U.S. involvement in the conflict, as Trump has warned.

    The parallel I see here is with the killing of Iranian general and commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020 by a U.S. drone strike.

    On that occasion, Iran promised a strong retaliation. Its retaliatory attack against the U.S. Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq involved 27 ballistic missiles and caused the physical destruction of some of the facilities on base as well as traumatic brain injury-type symptoms to dozens of troops and personnel, but no deaths. Nevertheless, after this both the U.S. and Iran then backed off from deepening the conflict.

    The circumstances now are very different. Iran is already at war with Israel. Moreover, the U.S. went after Iran’s crown jewels – its nuclear program – and it was on Iranian territory. Nonetheless, Khameini knows that if he retaliates, he risks provoking a larger response.

    Trump suggested ‘further attacks’ could occur. What could that entail?

    The U.S. has suggested that it has the intelligence and ability to hit senior leadership in Iran. And any “go big option” would have likely involved strikes on key personnel. Similarly there could be plans to hit the Iranian economy by attacking oil and gas targets.

    A satellite image of the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran prior to the U.S. strike on June 22, 2025.
    Maxar/Getty

    But such actions risk either damaging the global economy or drawing the U.S. deeper into the conflict – it would evolve from a “one and done” strike to a cycle of attacks and responses. And that could widen political cracks between hawks in the administration and parts of Trump’s MAGA faithful who are against the U.S. being involved in overseas wars.

    Is there any opportunity of a return to diplomacy?

    Trump has not closed his “two weeks” window for talks – theoretically it is still open.

    But will Iran come to table? Leaders there had already said they were not willing to entertain any deal while under attack from Israel. Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said after the U.S. strikes that the time for diplomacy had now passed.

    In any event, you have to ask, what can Iran come to the table with? Do they have much of a nuclear program anymore? And if not, what would they try to negotiate? It would seem, using one of Trump’s phrases, they “don’t have the cards” to make much of a deal.

    Javed Ali 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.

    – ref. US bombs Iran’s nuclear sites: What led to Trump pulling the trigger – and what happens next? – https://theconversation.com/us-bombs-irans-nuclear-sites-what-led-to-trump-pulling-the-trigger-and-what-happens-next-259519

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The sleeper Supreme Court decision that could have profound impacts on the Trump administration agenda – and restore faith in the high court

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ray Brescia, Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, Albany Law School

    The Trump administration has tried to punish or suppress speech and opposition to administration policies. Baac3nes/Getty Images

    The American public’s trust in the Supreme Court has fallen precipitously over the past decade. Many across the political spectrum see the court as too political.

    This view is only strengthened when Americans see most of the justices of the court dividing along ideological lines on decisions related to some of the most hot-button issues the court handles. Those include reproductive rights, voting rights, corporate power, environmental protection, student loan policy, worker rights and LGBTQ+ rights.

    But there is one recent decision where the court was unanimous in its ruling, perhaps because its holding should not be controversial: National Rifle Association v. Vullo. In that 2024 case, the court said that it’s a clear violation of the First Amendment’s free speech provisions for government to force people to speak and act in ways that are aligned with its policies.

    The second Trump administration has tried to wield executive branch power in ways that appear to punish or suppress speech and opposition to administration policy priorities. Many of those attempts have been legally challenged and will likely make their way to the Supreme Court.

    The somewhat under-the-radar – yet incredibly important – decision in National Rifle Association v. Vullo is likely to figure prominently in Supreme Court rulings in a slew of those cases in the coming months and years, including those involving law firms, universities and the Public Broadcasting Service.

    That’s because, in my view as a legal scholar, they are all First Amendment cases.

    Will the Supreme Court continue to protect free speech rights, as it did unanimously in 2024?
    Geoff Livingston/Getty Images

    Why the NRA sued a New York state official

    In May 2024, in an opinion written by reliably liberal Sonia Sotomayor, a unanimous court ruled that the efforts of New York state government officials to punish companies doing business with the NRA constituted clear violations of the First Amendment.

    Following its own precedent from the 1960s, Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the court found that government officials “cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

    Many of the current targets of the Trump administration’s actions have claimed similar suppression of their First Amendment rights by the government. They have fought back, filing lawsuits that often cite the National Rifle Association v. Vullo decision in their efforts.

    To date, the most egregious examples of actions that violate the principles announced by the court – the executive orders against law firms – have largely been halted in the lower courts, with those decisions often citing what’s now known as the Vullo decision.

    While these cases may still be working their way through the lower courts, it is likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately consider legal challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts in a range of areas.

    These would include the executive orders against law firms, attempts to cut government grants and research funding from universities, potential moves to strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, and regulatory actions punishing media companies for what the White House believes to be unfavorable coverage.

    The court could also hear disputes over the government terminating contracts with a family of companies that provides satellite and communications support to the U.S. government generally and the military in particular.

    Despite the variety of organizations and government actions involved in these lawsuits, they all can be seen as struggles over free speech and expression, like Vullo.

    Whether it is private law firms, multinational corporations, universities or members of the media, all have one thing in common: They have all been targeted by the Trump administration for the same reason – they are engaged in actions or speech that is disfavored by President Donald Trump.

    Protecting speech, regardless of politics

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, front, took leave to help prosecute war criminals at the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II.
    Bettman/Getty Images

    The NRA, an often-controversial gun-rights advocacy organization, was the plaintiff in the Vullo decision.

    But just because the groups that have been targeted by the Trump administration are across the political divide from the NRA does not mean the outcome in decisions relying on the court’s opinion will be different. In fact, these groups can rely on the same arguments advanced by the NRA, and are, I believe, likely to win.

    Vullo isn’t the only decision on which the court can rely when considering challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts targeting these groups.

    In 1943, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where the court found that students who refused to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school could not be expelled.

    Jackson’s opinion is a forceful rejection of government attempts to control what people say: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

    In the wake of World War II, Jackson took a leave from the court and served as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. Prosecuting them for their atrocities, Jackson saw how the Nuremberg defendants wielded government authority to punish enemies who resisted their rise and later opposed their rule.

    If some of the cases testing the state’s power to force fidelity to the executive branch reach the Supreme Court, the cases could offer the justices the opportunity to, once again, speak with one voice as they did in NRA v. Vullo, to demonstrate it can be evenhanded and will not play politics with the First Amendment.

    This story has been updated with the correct year for the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.

    Ray Brescia 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.

    – ref. The sleeper Supreme Court decision that could have profound impacts on the Trump administration agenda – and restore faith in the high court – https://theconversation.com/the-sleeper-supreme-court-decision-that-could-have-profound-impacts-on-the-trump-administration-agenda-and-restore-faith-in-the-high-court-258216

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Presidents of both parties have launched military action without Congress declaring war − Trump’s bombing of Iran is just the latest

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sarah Burns, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

    President Donald Trump is seen on a monitor in the White House press briefing room on June 21, 2025, after the U.S. military strike on three sites in Iran. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    In the wake of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025, many congressional Democrats and a few Republicans have objected to President Donald Trump’s failure to seek congressional approval before conducting military operations.

    They note that Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war and say that section required Trump to seek prior authorization for military action.

    The Trump administration disagrees. “This is not a war against Iran,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, implying that the action did not require approval by Congress. That’s the same view held by most modern presidents and their lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel: Article 2 of the Constitution allows the president to use the military in certain situations without prior approval from Congress.

    By this reading of the text, presidents, as commander in chief, claim the power to unilaterally order the military to initiate small-scale operations for a short duration. Members of Congress may object to that claim, but they have done little to limit presidents’ unilateralism. What little they have done has not been effective.

    As I’ve demonstrated in my research, even though the 1973 War Powers Resolution attempted to constrain presidential power after the disasters of the Vietnam War, it contains many loopholes that presidents have exploited to act unilaterally. For example, it allows presidents to engage in military operations without congressional approval for up to 90 days. And more recent congressional resolutions have broadened executive control even further.

    President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the U.S. declaration of war against Japan on Dec. 8, 1941.
    U.S. National Archives

    A long tradition of executive authority

    Presidents can even overcome the loopholes in the War Powers Resolution if the operation lasts longer than 90 days. In 2011, a State Department lawyer argued that airstrikes in Libya could continue beyond the War Powers Resolution’s 90-day time limit because there were no ground troops involved. By that logic, any future president could carry out an indefinite bombing campaign with no congressional oversight.

    While every president has bristled at congressional restraints on their actions, presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have successfully circumvented them by citing vague concerns like “national security,” “regional security” or the need to “prevent a humanitarian disaster” when launching military operations. While members of Congress always take issue with these actions, they never hold presidents accountable by passing legislation restraining him.

    President Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites without consulting Congress falls in line with precedent from both Democratic and Republican leaders for decades.

    Much like his predecessors, Trump did not, and likely will not, provide Congress with more concrete information about the legality of his actions. Nor are congressional lawmakers effectively holding him accountable.

    The push-and-pull between Congress and the president over military operations dates back to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, which led Congress to declare war on Japan. Before then, Congress had prevented the U.S. from joining World War II by enforcing an arms embargo and refusing to help the Allies prior to the attack on Hawaii. But afterward, Congress began allowing the president to take more control over the military.

    During the Cold War, rather than returning to a balanced debate between the branches, Congress continued to relinquish those powers.

    Congress never authorized the war in Korea; Harry Truman used a U.N. Security Council resolution as legal justification. Congress’ vote explicitly opposing the invasion of Cambodia didn’t stop Richard Nixon from doing it anyway. Even after the Cold War, Bill Clinton regularly acted unilaterally to address humanitarian crises or the continued threat from leaders like Saddam Hussein. He sent the military to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, among other places.

    After 9/11, Congress quickly gave up more of its power. A week after those attacks, Congress passed a sweeping Authorization for Use of Military Force, giving the president permission to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

    In a follow-up 2002 authorization, Congress went even further, allowing the president to “use the Armed Forces … as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend national security … against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” This approach provides few, if any, congressional checks on the control of military affairs exercised by the president.

    In the two decades since those authorizations, four presidents have used them to justify all manner of military action, from targeted killings of terrorists to the years long fight against the Islamic State group.

    Congress regularly discusses terminating those authorizations, but has yet to do so. If Congress did, the loopholes in the original War Powers Resolution would still exist.

    While President Biden claimed he supported the repeal of the authorizations, and supported more congressional oversight of military actions, Trump has made no such claims. Instead, he has claimed even more sweeping authority to act without any permission from Congress.

    As recently as 2024, Biden used the 2002 authorization as a legal rationale for the targeted killing of Iranian-backed militiamen in Iraq, a strike condemned by Iraqi leaders.

    Those actions may have ruffled congressional feathers, but they were in keeping with a long U.S. tradition of targeting members of terrorist groups and protecting members of the military serving in a conflict zone.

    Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol in January 2020 call on Congress to limit the president’s powers to use the military.
    AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

    Threats of war

    During his first presidential term in 2020, Trump ordered a lethal drone strike against a respected member of the Iranian government, Major General Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s equivalent of the CIA, without consulting Congress or publicly providing proof of why the attack was necessary, even to this day.

    Tensions – and fears of war – spiked but then slowly faded when Iran responded with missile attacks on two U.S. bases in Iraq.

    Now, the U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites have revived both fears of war and renewed questions about the president’s authority to unilaterally engage in military action. Presidents since the 1970s, however, have effectively managed to dodge definitive answers to those questions – demonstrating both the power inherent in their position and the unwillingness among members of the legislative branch to reclaim their coequal status.

    This article is an updated version of a story published on Jan. 24, 2024.

    Sarah Burns 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.

    – ref. Presidents of both parties have launched military action without Congress declaring war − Trump’s bombing of Iran is just the latest – https://theconversation.com/presidents-of-both-parties-have-launched-military-action-without-congress-declaring-war-trumps-bombing-of-iran-is-just-the-latest-259636

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Rethinking engineering education: Why focusing on learning preferences matters for diversity

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Sharon Tettegah, Professor of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

    Retention and recruitment efforts designed to boost diversity in engineering programs often fall short of their goals. gorodenkoff/Getty Images

    For decades, colleges, government agencies and foundations have experimented with recruitment and retention efforts designed to increase diversity in engineering programs.

    However, the efforts have not significantly boosted the number of women, students of color, individuals with disabilities and other underrepresented groups studying and earning degrees in STEM and engineering fields.

    Latino, Black, Native American and Alaska Native students are underrepresented among science and engineering degree recipients at the bachelor’s degree level and above. The groups are also underrepresented among STEM workers with at least a bachelor’s degree.

    Women are also underrepresented in the STEM workforce and among degree recipients in engineering and computer and information sciences.

    I study equity and social justice in STEM learning. In my recent study, I found that more students from diverse backgrounds could excel in engineering programs if course content were tailored to a wider variety of learning preferences.

    Why it matters

    Focusing on learning preferences could boost diversity in engineering courses and careers.
    Morsa Images/Getty Images

    During my time as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering, I reviewed plenty of research focused on broadening participation and diversifying student enrollment in STEM fields.

    Progress can stall on efforts to boost diversity because college instructors do not consider the synergistic relationship between the content and the learner.

    Teachers are the mediators, and it is students’ experiences with the curriculum that matter.

    It was long a common belief that students have different learning styles. These included kinesthetic, learning through hands-on experiences and physical activity; auditory, learning by listening to information; and visual, learning by seeing information.

    More recent research does not support the idea that teaching students according to their learning style leads to improved learning.

    That’s why I prefer the term “learning preferences” rather than learning styles. We all have preferences – whether for ice cream flavors, home decor or how we receive information, including how we learn.

    Learning preferences are broader and more flexible, allowing multiple ways of engaging with content.

    For example, let’s say a teacher always presented equations in a classroom and the student just could not get it. However, it was the only way the information was presented. To the individual learner, they have failed. Some people would say, “These kids can’t learn,” and subsequently counsel the student out of the class.

    Then, years are spent repeating the same cycle.

    Students should have opportunities to connect with engineering content in multiple ways.
    10’000 hours/Getty Images

    However, educators can broaden their viewpoints if they look at the students as customers. If a customer is shopping for a shirt, they look for one that catches their eye. Ultimately, they find one they like.

    Instructors need to take the same approach when trying to help students understand what is happening in class. For instance, if I have trouble with equations, I should be provided with options to engage with the lesson in ways that align with my learning preferences.

    What’s next?

    Learning styles have been heavily researched. However, content preferences have not been well explored.

    In a truly democratic education system, curriculum design should reflect the voices of all stakeholders and not just those in positions of power, namely instructors.

    Using data mining and artificial intelligence, educators have a variety of options for creating content for the various preferences a learner may want or need. For example, if a student prefers other representational content, such as word problems, graphics or simulations, AI can create diverse representations so that the learner is exposed to a variety of representations.

    I argue that future studies need to consider the use of technologies such as adaptive learning applications to understand students’ learning preferences.

    Prioritizing diverse learning perspectives in STEM could help create a more inclusive and responsive learning environment.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    Sharon Tettegah received funding from the National Science Foundation for this work. Award Abstract # 1826632
    Coordinating Curricula and User Preferences to Increase the Participation of Women and Students of Color in Engineering

    – ref. Rethinking engineering education: Why focusing on learning preferences matters for diversity – https://theconversation.com/rethinking-engineering-education-why-focusing-on-learning-preferences-matters-for-diversity-251095

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Harvard fights to keep enrolling international students – 4 essential reads about their broader impact

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Corey Mitchell, Education Editor

    Graduates of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government celebrate during commencement exercises in Cambridge, Mass. AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

    A federal judge in Boston on May 23, 2025, temporarily blocked a Trump administration order that would have revoked Harvard University’s authorization to enroll international students.

    The directive from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and resulting lawsuit from Harvard have escalated the ongoing conflict between the Trump administration and the Ivy League institution.

    It’s also the latest step in a White House campaign to ramp up vetting and screening of foreign nationals, including students.

    Homeland Security officials accused Harvard of creating a hostile campus climate by accommodating “anti-American” and “pro-terrorist agitators.” The accusation stems from the university’s alleged support for certain political groups and their activities on campus.

    In early April, the Trump administration terminated the immigration statuses of thousands of international students listed in a government database, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. The database includes country of citizenship, which U.S. school they attend and what they study.

    Barring Harvard from enrolling international students could have significant implications for the campus’s climate and the local economy. International students account for 27% of the university’s enrollment.

    Here are four stories from The Conversation’s archive about the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard and the economic impact of international students.

    1. A target on Harvard

    This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has targeted the university.

    The White House has threatened to end the university’s tax-exempt status, and some media outlets have reported that the Internal Revenue Service is taking steps in that direction.

    But it is illegal to revoke an entity’s tax-emempt status “on a whim,” according to Philip Hackney, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, and Brian Mittendorf, an accounting professor at Ohio State University.

    “Before the IRS can do that, tax law requires that it first audit that charity,” they wrote. “And it’s illegal for U.S. presidents or other officials to force the IRS to conduct an audit or stop one that’s already begun.”

    Several U.S. senators, all Democrats, have urged the IRS inspector general to see whether the IRS has begun auditing Harvard or any nonprofits in response to the administration’s requests or whether Trump has violated any laws with his pressure campaign.

    Hackney and Mittendorf wrote that the Trump administration’s moves are part of a larger push to exert control over Harvard, including its efforts to increase its diversity and its response to claims of discrimination on campus.



    Read more:
    Can Trump strip Harvard of its charitable status? Scholars of nonprofit law and accounting describe the obstacles in his way

    University of Michigan students on campus on April 3, 2025, in Ann Arbor, Mich.
    Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

    2. International students help keep ‘America First’

    The U.S. has long been the global leader in attracting international students. But competition for these students is increasing as other countries vie to attract the scholars.

    In a recent story for The Conversation, David L. Di Maria, vice provost for global engagement at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, wrote that stepped-up screening and vetting of students could make the U.S. a less attractive study destination.

    Di Maria wrote that such efforts could hamper the Trump administration’s ability to achieve its “America First” priorities related to the economy, science and technology, and national security.

    Trump administration officials have emphasized the importance of recruiting top global talent. And Trump has said that international students who graduate from U.S. colleges should be awarded a green card with their degree.

    Research shows that international students launch successful startups at a rate that is eight to nine times higher than their U.S.-born peers. Roughly 25% of billion-dollar companies in the U.S. were founded by former international students, Di Maria noted.



    Read more:
    Deporting international students risks making the US a less attractive destination, putting its economic engine at risk

    3. A boost to local economies

    Indeed, international students have a tremendous economic impact on local communities.

    If these global scholars stay home or go elsewhere, that’s bad economic news for cities and towns across the United States, wrote Barnet Sherman, a professor of multinational finance and trade at Boston University.

    With the money they spend on tuition, food, housing and other other items, international students pump money into the local economy, but there are additional benefits.

    On average, a new job is created for every three international students enrolled in a U.S. college or university. In the 2023-24 academic year, about 378,175 jobs were created, Sherman wrote.

    In Greater Boston, where Harvard is located, there are about 63,000 international students who contribute to the economy. The gains are huge – about US$3 billion.



    Read more:
    International students infuse tens of millions of dollars into local economies across the US. What happens if they stay home?

    4. Rising number of international students

    The rising number of foreign students studying in the U.S. has long led to concerns about U.S. students being displaced by international peers.

    The unease is often fueled by the assumption that financial interests are driving the trend, Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University and Bernhard Streitwieser of George Washington University wrote in a 2015 story for The Conversation.

    A common claim, they wrote, is the flawed assumption that “cash-strapped public universities” aggressively recruit more affluent students from abroad who can afford to pay rising tuition costs. The pair wrote that, historically, shifting demographics on college campuses result from social and economic changes.

    In today’s context, Miller-Idriss and Streitwieser maintain that the argument that colleges prioritize international students fails to account for the global role of U.S. universities, which help support national security, foster international development projects and accelerate the pace of globalization.



    Read more:
    Foreign students not a threat, but an advantage

    This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

    – ref. Harvard fights to keep enrolling international students – 4 essential reads about their broader impact – https://theconversation.com/harvard-fights-to-keep-enrolling-international-students-4-essential-reads-about-their-broader-impact-257506

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Air traffic controller shortages in Newark and other airports partly reflect long, intense training − but university-based training programs are becoming part of the solution

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Melanie Dickman, Lecturer in Aviation Studies, The Ohio State University

    Air traffic controllers observe a plane taking off from San Francisco International Airport in 2017. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

    Air traffic controllers have been in the news a lot lately.

    A spate of airplane crashes and near misses have highlighted the ongoing shortage of air traffic workers, leading more Americans to question the safety of air travel.

    The shortage, as well as aging computer systems, have also led to massive flight disruptions at airports across the country, particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport. The staffing shortage is also likely at the center of an investigation of a deadly crash between a commercial plane and an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., in January 2025.

    One reason for the air traffic controller shortage relates to the demands of the job: The training to become a controller is extremely intense, and the Federal Aviation Administration wants only highly qualified personnel to fill those seats, which has made it difficult for what has been the sole training center in the U.S., located in Oklahoma City, to churn out enough qualified graduates each year.

    As scholars who study and teach tomorrow’s aviation professionals, we are working to be part of the solution. Our program at Ohio State University is applying to join over two dozen other schools in an effort to train air traffic controllers and help alleviate the shortage.

    Air traffic controller school

    Air traffic control training today – overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration – remains as intense as it’s ever been.

    In fact, about 30% of students fail to make it from their first day of training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City to the status of a certified professional air traffic controller. The academy currently trains the majority of the air traffic controllers in the U.S.

    Before someone is accepted into the training program, they must meet several qualifications. That includes being a U.S. citizen under the age of 31 and speaking English clearly enough to be understood over the radio. The low recruitment age is because controllers currently have a mandatory retirement age of 56 – with some exceptions – and the FAA wants them to work for at least 25 years in the job.

    They must also pass a medical exam and security investigation. And they must pass the air traffic controller specialists skills assessment battery, which measures an applicant’s spatial awareness and decision-making abilities.

    Candidates, additionally, must have three years of general work experience, or a combination of postsecondary education and work experience totaling at least three years.

    This alone is no easy feat. Fewer than 10% of applicants meet those initial requirements and are accepted into training.

    An air traffic controller monitors a runway in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
    AP Photo/Seth Wenig

    Intense training

    Once applicants meet the initial qualifications, they begin a strenuous training process.

    This begins with several weeks of classroom instruction and several months of simulator training. There are several types of simulators, and a student is assigned to a simulator based on the type of facility for which they will be hired – which depends on a trainee’s preference and where controllers are needed.

    There are two main types of air traffic facilities: control towers and radar. Anyone who has flown on a plane has likely seen a control tower near the runways, with 360 degrees of tall glass windows to monitor the skies nearby. Controllers there mainly look outside to direct aircraft but also use radar to monitor the airspace and assist aircraft in taking off and landing safely.

    Radar facilities, on the other hand, monitor aircraft solely through the use of information depicted on a screen. This includes aircraft flying just outside the vicinity of a major airport or when they’re at higher altitudes and crisscrossing the skies above the U.S. The controllers ensure they don’t fly too close to one another as they follow their flight paths between airports.

    If the candidates make it through the first stage, which takes about six months and extensive testing to meet standards, they will be sent to their respective facilities.

    Once there, they again go to the classroom, learning the details of the airspace they will be working in. There are more assessments and chances to “wash out” and have to leave the program.

    Finally, the candidates are paired with an experienced controller who conducts on-the-job training to control real aircraft. This process may take an additional year or more. It depends on the complexity of the airspace and the amount of aircraft traffic at the site.

    Two control towers watch over Newark Liberty International Airport, where a shortage of air traffic controllers has led to blackouts and other problems lately.
    AP Photo/Seth Wenig

    Increasing the employment pipeline

    But no matter how good the training is, if there aren’t enough graduates, that’s a problem for managing the increasingly crowded skies.

    The FAA is currently facing a deficit of about 3,000 controllers and has unveiled a plan in May 2025 to increase hiring and boost retention. In addition, Congress is mulling spending billions of dollars to update the FAA’s aging systems and hire more air traffic controllers.

    Other plans include paying retention bonuses and allowing more controllers to work beyond the age of 56. That retirement age was put in place in the 1970s on the assumption that cognition for most people begins to decline around then, although research shows that age alone is not necessarily a predictor of cognitive abilities.

    But we believe that aviation programs and universities can play an important role fixing the shortage by providing FAA Academy-level training.

    Currently, 32 universities including the Florida Institute of Technology and Arizona State University partner with the FAA in its collegiate training initiative to provide basic air traffic control training, which gives graduates automatic entry into the FAA Academy and allows them to skip five weeks of coursework.

    The institution where we work, Ohio State University, is currently working on becoming the 33rd this summer and plans to offer an undergraduate major in aviation with specialization in air traffic control.

    This helps, but an enhanced version of this program, announced in October 2024, allows graduates of a select few of those universities to skip the FAA Academy altogether and go straight to a control tower or radar facility once they’ve passed all the extensive tests. These schools must match or exceed the level of rigor in their training with the FAA Academy itself.

    At the end of the program, students are required to pass an evaluation by an FAA-approved evaluator to ensure that the student graduating from the program meets the same standards as all FAA Academy graduates and is prepared to go to their assigned facility for further training. So far, five schools, such as the University of North Dakota, have joined this program and are currently training air traffic controllers. We intend to join this group in the near future.

    Allowing colleges and universities to start the training process while students are still in school should accelerate the pace at which new controllers enter the workforce, alleviate the shortage and make the skies over the U.S. as safe as they can be.

    Melanie Dickman is a member at large of the Air Traffic Controllers Association

    Brian Strzempkowski 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.

    – ref. Air traffic controller shortages in Newark and other airports partly reflect long, intense training − but university-based training programs are becoming part of the solution – https://theconversation.com/air-traffic-controller-shortages-in-newark-and-other-airports-partly-reflect-long-intense-training-but-university-based-training-programs-are-becoming-part-of-the-solution-249715

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Texas’ annual reading test adjusted its difficulty every year, masking whether students are improving

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jeanne Sinclair, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland

    Millions of Americans take high-stakes exams every year. Caiaimage/Chris Ryan/iStock via Getty Images

    Texas children’s performance on an annual reading test was basically flat from 2012 to 2021, even as the state spent billions of additional dollars on K-12 education.

    I recently did a peer-reviewed deep dive into the test design documentation to figure out why the reported results weren’t showing improvement. I found the flat scores were at least in part by design. According to policies buried in the documentation, the agency administering the tests adjusted their difficulty level every year. As a result, roughly the same share of students failed the test over that decade regardless of how objectively better they performed relative to previous years.

    From 2008 to 2014, I was a bilingual teacher in Texas. Most of my students’ families hailed from Mexico and Central America and were learning English as a new language. I loved seeing my students’ progress.

    Yet, no matter how much they learned, many failed the end-of-year tests in reading, writing and math. My hunch was that these tests were unfair, but I could not explain why. This, among other things, prompted me to pursue a Ph.D. in education to better understand large-scale educational assessment.

    Ten years later, in 2024, I completed a detailed exploration of Texas’s exam, currently known as the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR. I found an unexpected trend: The share of students who correctly answered each test question was extraordinarily steady across years. Where we would expect to see fluctuation from year to year, performance instead appears artificially flat.

    The STAAR’s technical documents suggest that the test is designed much like a norm-referenced test – that is, assessing students relative to their peers, rather than if they meet a fixed standard. In other words, a norm-referenced test cannot tell us if students meet key, fixed criteria or grade-level standards set by the state.

    In addition, norm-referenced tests are designed so that a certain share of students always fail, because success is gauged by one’s position on the “bell curve” in relation to other students. Following this logic, STAAR developers use practices like omitting easier questions and adjusting scores to cancel out gains due to better teaching.

    Ultimately, the STAAR tests over this time frame – taken by students every year from grade 3 to grade 8 in language arts and math, and less frequently in science and social studies – were not designed to show improvement. Since the test seems designed to keep scores flat, it’s impossible to know for sure if a lack of expected learning gains following big increases in per-student spending was because the extra funds failed to improve teaching and learning, or simply because the test hid the improvements.

    Why it matters

    Ever since the federal education policy known as No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002 and tied students’ test performance to rewards and sanctions for schools, achievement testing has been a primary driver of public education in the United States.

    Texas’ educational accountability system has been in place since 1980, and it is well known in the state that the stakes and difficulty of Texas’ academic readiness tests increase with each new version, which typically come out every five to 10 years. What the Texas public may not know is that the tests have been adjusted each and every year – at the expense of really knowing who should “pass” or “fail.”

    The test’s design affects not just students but also schools and communities. High-stakes test scores determine school resources, the state’s takeover of school districts and accreditation of teacher education programs. Home values are even driven by local schools’ performance on high-stakes tests.

    Students who are marginalized by racism, poverty or language have historically tended to underperform on standardized tests. I believe STAAR’s design makes this problem worse.

    On May 28, 2025, the Texas Senate passed a bill that would eliminate the STAAR test and replace it with a different, shorter test or a norm-referenced test. As best as I can tell, this wouldn’t address the problems I uncovered in my research.

    What still isn’t known

    I plan to investigate if other states or the federal government use similarly designed tests to evaluate students.

    My deep dive into Texas’ test focused on STAAR before its 2022 redevelopment. The latest iteration has changed the test format and question types, but there appears to be little change to the way the test is scored. Without substantive revisions to the scoring calculations “under the hood” of the STAAR test, it is likely Texas will continue to see flat performance.

    This article was updated on May 31, 2025, to clarify some language and the type of data used in the chart, replace a link and add a comment from the Texas Education Agency.

    The Texas Education Agency responded to a pre-publication request for comment after the piece was published. A spokesman refuted several of the scholar’s research conclusions, including that it behaved like a norm-referenced test. However, the scholar stands by them.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    Jeanne Sinclair receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.

    – ref. Texas’ annual reading test adjusted its difficulty every year, masking whether students are improving – https://theconversation.com/texas-annual-reading-test-adjusted-its-difficulty-every-year-masking-whether-students-are-improving-244159

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Our trans health study was terminated by the government – the effects of abrupt NIH grant cuts ripple across science and society

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jae A. Puckett, Associate Professor of Psychology, Michigan State University

    Funding cuts to trans health research are part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to medically and legally restrict trans rights. AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson

    Given the Trump administration’s systematic attempts to medically and legally disenfranchise trans people, and its abrupt termination of grants focused on LGBTQ+ health, we can’t say that the notice of termination we received regarding our federally funded research on transgender and nonbinary people’s health was unexpected.

    As researchers who study the experiences of trans and nonbinary people, we have collectively dedicated nearly 50 years of our scientific careers to developing ways to address the health disparities negatively affecting these communities. The National Institutes of Health had placed a call for projects on this topic, and we had successfully applied for their support for our four-year study on resilience in trans communities.

    However, our project on trans health became one of the hundreds of grants that have been terminated on ideological grounds. The termination notice stated that the grant no longer fit agency priorities and claimed that this work was not based on scientific research.

    Termination notice sent to the authors from the National Institutes of Health.
    Jae A. Puckett and Paz Galupo, CC BY-ND

    These grant terminations undermine decades of science on gender diversity by dismissing research findings and purging data. During Trump’s current term, the NIH’s Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office was dismantled, references to LGBTQ+ people were removed from health-related websites, and datasets were removed from public access.

    The effects of ending research on trans health ripple throughout the scientific community, the communities served by this work and the U.S. economy.

    Studying resilience

    Research focused on the mental health of trans and nonbinary people has grown substantially in recent years. Over time, this work has expanded beyond understanding the hardships these communities face to also study their resilience and positive life experiences.

    Resilience is often understood as an ability to bounce back from challenges. For trans and nonbinary people experiencing gender-based stigma and discrimination, resilience can take several forms. This might look like simply continuing to survive in a transphobic climate, or it might take the form of being a role model for other trans and nonbinary people.

    As a result of gender-based stigma and discrimination, trans and nonbinary people experience a range of health disparities, from elevated rates of psychological distress to heightened risk for chronic health conditions and poor physical health. In the face of these challenges and growing anti-trans legislation in the U.S., we believe that studying resilience in these communities can provide insights into how to offset the harms of these stresses.

    Studies show anti-trans legislation is harming the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth.

    With the support of the NIH, we began our work in earnest in 2022. The project was built on many years of research from our teams preceding the grant. From the beginning, we collaborated with trans and nonbinary community members to ensure our research would be attuned to the needs of the community.

    At the time our grant was terminated, we were nearing completion of Year 3 of our four-year project. We had collected data from over 600 trans and nonbinary participants across the U.S. and started to follow their progress over time. We had developed a new way to measure resilience among trans and nonbinary people and were about to publish a second measure specifically tailored to people of color.

    The termination of our grant and others like it harms our immediate research team, the communities we worked with and the field more broadly.

    Loss of scientific workforce

    For many researchers in trans health, the losses from these cuts go beyond employment.

    Our project had served as a training opportunity for the students and early career professionals involved in the study, providing them with the research experience and mentorship necessary to advance their careers. But with the termination of our funding, two full-time researchers and at least three students will lose their positions. The three lead scientists have lost parts of their salaries and dedicated research time.

    These NIH cuts will likely result in the loss of much of the next generation of trans researchers and the contributions they would have made to science and society. Our team and other labs in similar situations will be less likely to work with graduate students due to a lack of available funding to pay and support them. This changes the landscape for future scientists, as it means there will be fewer opportunities for individuals interested in these areas of research to enter graduate training programs.

    The Trump administration has directly penalized universities across the country for ‘ideological overreach.’
    Zhu Ziyu/VCG via Getty Images

    As universities struggle to address federal funding cuts, junior academics will be less likely to gain tenure, and faculty in grant-funded positions may lose their jobs. Universities may also become hesitant to hire people who work in these areas because their research has essentially been banned from federal funding options.

    Loss of community trust

    Trans and nonbinary people have often been studied under opportunistic and demeaning circumstances. This includes when researchers collect data for their own gains but return little to the communities they work with, or when they do research that perpetuates theories that pathologize those communities. As a result, many are often reluctant to participate in research.

    To overcome this reluctance, we grounded our study on community input. We involved an advisory board composed of local trans and nonbinary community members who helped to inform how we conducted our study and measured our findings.

    Our work on resilience has been inspired by feedback we received from previous research participants who said that “[trans people] matter even when not in pain.”

    Abruptly terminating projects like these can break down trust between researchers and the populations they study.

    Loss of scientific knowledge

    Research that focuses on the strengths of trans and nonbinary communities is in its infancy. The termination of our grant has led to the loss of the insights our study would have provided on ways to improve health among trans and nonbinary people and future work that would have built off our findings. Resilience is a process that takes time to unfold, and we had not finished the longitudinal data collection in our study – nor will we have the protected time to publish and share other findings from this work.

    Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services released a May 2025 report stating that there is not enough evidence to support gender-affirming care for young people, contradicting decades of scientific research. Scientists, researchers and medical professional organizations have widely criticized the report as misrepresenting study findings, dismissing research showing benefits to gender-affirming care, and promoting misinformation rejected by major medical associations. Instead, the report recommends “exploratory therapy,” which experts have likened to discredited conversion therapy.

    Transgender and nonbinary people continue to exist, regardless of legislation.
    Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

    Despite claims that there is insufficient research on gender-affirming care and more data is needed on the health of trans and nonbinary people, the government has chosen to divest from actual scientific research about trans and nonbinary people’s lives.

    Loss of taxpayer dollars

    The termination of our grant means we are no longer able to achieve the aims of the project, which depended on the collection and analysis of data over time. This wastes the three years of NIH funding already spent on the project.

    Scientists and experts who participated in the review of our NIH grant proposal rated our project more highly than 96% of the projects we competed against. Even so, the government made the unscientific choice to override these decisions and terminate our work.

    Millions of taxpayer dollars have already been invested in these grants to improve the health of not only trans and nonbinary people, but also American society as a whole. With the termination of these grants, few will get to see the benefits of this investment.

    Jae A. Puckett has received funding from the National Institutes of Health.

    Paz Galupo has received funding from the National Institutes of Health.

    – ref. Our trans health study was terminated by the government – the effects of abrupt NIH grant cuts ripple across science and society – https://theconversation.com/our-trans-health-study-was-terminated-by-the-government-the-effects-of-abrupt-nih-grant-cuts-ripple-across-science-and-society-254021

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Teens say they can access firearms at home, even when parents lock them up, new research shows

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Katherine G. Hastings, PhD Candidate in Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia

    Most households that own firearms have more than one − and owners often don’t secure all of them. StockPlanets/E+ via Getty Images

    More than half of U.S. teens living in households with firearms believe they can access and load a firearm at home. Even when their parents report storing all firearms locked and unloaded, more than one-third of teens still believe they could access and load one. These are the main findings of our new study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

    We are behavioral scientists investigating youth injury prevention and youth safety. In this study, we analyzed national survey data from nearly 500 parents who owned firearms and their teens. One survey asked the parents to report how many firearms they had in the home and how they stored each one. Another asked their teens to estimate how quickly they could access and load a firearm at home.

    While the presence of unlocked and loaded firearms in the home was weakly linked to perceived access among teens, we found that parents’ storage practices alone were a poor predictor of whether teens believed they could access a firearm. What’s more, in households with more than one firearm, locking up more firearms was not at all linked to perceived access among teens if at least one remained unsecured.

    In short, just one unlocked firearm can undo the protective benefit of securing all other firearms in the home, our results showed.

    Why it matters

    In the U.S., firearms are now the leading cause of death among children and teens. In most of these cases, the firearm used belonged to a parent, relative or friend.

    Our study focused on teens’ beliefs about firearm access, not their actual access. However, these perceptions may provide important clues around firearm access and use. Prior research shows that teens who believe they can access a firearm are more likely to access and carry one. This is particularly concerning for teens who already have a higher risk for dying by suicide.

    One of the most widely supported ways to reduce teen injuries and deaths by firearms is to encourage owners to keep firearms locked and unloaded. However, most firearm-owning households in the U.S. have multiple firearms, and owners often store some firearms securely but not all.

    Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens.
    Kypros/Stock Photos Gun Safe via Getty Images

    Despite evidence that securely storing firearms saves lives, efforts to promote that messaging may be less effective when it is not universally applied to all firearms in the home or when teens still know how to access them.

    Our study also points to the need for messaging and safety strategies that consider teen behavior amid household firearm dynamics. For example, teens may observe where firearms are stored or know where keys or combinations are kept and unlock firearms in moments of impulsivity or emotional distress. Beyond securely storing firearms, encouraging parents to treat every firearm in the household as a potential source of risk and talking with teens about how to address conflicts and promote mental and emotional well-being may also be protective.

    Additionally, our study adds support for universal laws that require securely storing all firearms in homes in which children live and mandating routine assessments of teen firearm access by pediatricians.

    What still isn’t known

    It is still unclear how teens’ beliefs about their access to firearms affects whether they actually seek them out – or how the variability of parents’ practices on storing firearms affects teen access.

    Another important question is how teens’ perceptions of their access to firearms at home may vary depending on cultural backgrounds, geography and different households’ attitudes and beliefs around firearm use.

    Additionally, our study looked only at teens ages 14 to 18. Further research is needed to explore these associations among younger children in firearm-owning households.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    Rebeccah Sokol receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Katherine G. Hastings 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.

    – ref. Teens say they can access firearms at home, even when parents lock them up, new research shows – https://theconversation.com/teens-say-they-can-access-firearms-at-home-even-when-parents-lock-them-up-new-research-shows-256550

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Adolescents who smoke or vape may believe tobacco’s perceived coping benefits outweigh accepted health risks

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Adriana Espinosa, Associate Professor of Psychology, City College of New York

    Many parents are unaware of their adolescents’ tobacco use. Naveen Asaithambi/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Tobacco use in a variety of forms is common in adolescent life today, with over 2.25 million youth using.

    Huge progress has been made over the past few decades in reducing cigarette use among young people. But tobacco use – primarily through e-cigarettes, also known as vapes – remains a complex problem for public health and policy.

    In 2024, just over 8% of U.S. middle and high school students reported having used a tobacco product. Among tobacco users, nearly 6% used e-cigarettes, more than a quarter of whom used an e-cigarette product daily.

    We are behavioral health researchers. Our team’s ongoing research examines the factors associated with adolescent tobacco product use in the U.S.

    According to our research, many adolescents who smoke and use vapes are aware of the health risks associated with tobacco use, which demonstrates the effectiveness of public health education campaigns.

    But our research has also found that some adolescents also view tobacco use as helpful in relieving emotional distress. These perceived benefits increase the likelihood of initiating and continuing tobacco use.

    When combined with factors such as easy access to tobacco products or living with someone who uses them, the risk of adolescent use more than doubles, which sets the stage for harmful physical and mental health effects.

    Parental awareness and adolescents’ motivations to use tobacco

    As a mother of a teenager, one of us, Adriana, has experienced this firsthand. For months, my 14-year-old son was vaping in his room, and I had no idea. When he finally told me that he turned to vaping whenever he felt upset, it was like coming face-to-face with the very issues we study.

    This scenario illustrates both the compelling reasons why adolescents may use tobacco and nicotine products and the reality that many parents don’t realize their kids are smoking or vaping.

    Since 2022, our team has been examining the factors associated with tobacco use among more than 8,000 adolescents ages 12 to 17 from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health, or PATH, study – the largest multiyear, nationally representative study of tobacco use in the U.S. We looked at the use of cigarettes, electronic products, traditional or filtered cigars, cigarillos, pipes, hookahs, smokeless or dissolvable tobacco and more.

    We found that emotional distress, along with the belief that tobacco products help manage negative emotions, are significant factors driving adolescent tobacco use.

    This highlights the complexity of the issue – that even when teens recognize the health risks of tobacco use, vaping and other forms of tobacco use may function as a coping strategy, albeit an unhealthy one, for the wide range of emotional challenges that come with adolescence.

    Teachers and school administrators are struggling to control vaping among students because many devices are small, odorless and easy to conceal.
    Peter Dazeley/Photodisc via Getty Images

    Harmful effects of adolescent tobacco use

    Research has shown that adolescents may perceive e-cigarettes as a more appealing and less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes.

    The availability of flavored options further increases the appeal of these products and can contribute to the progression from occasional to regular use and ultimately the development of nicotine dependence.

    A growing body of research continues to reveal the harmful effects of tobacco use, including vaping, on developing brains and lungs. Exposure to nicotine during adolescence can interfere with brain development, impair attention and learning, and increase the risk of use and dependence on other substances later in life.

    What makes vaping especially difficult to manage is its stealth. Unlike combustible products, many vaping devices are small, odorless and very easy to conceal. As a result, parents, teachers and school administrators are struggling to detect and curb vaping among teens.

    Strategies for addressing why teens use tobacco

    In our view, policy efforts that focus primarily on raising awareness about health risks, restricting access to tobacco products or reducing the appeal of e-cigarettes or vapes will reach only a subset of youth who use them, and not those who may use for emotional reasons.

    And while such bans may limit access to tobacco products in formal settings, the availability of these products from friends and social networks, online platforms or unregulated markets will not likely be reduced solely through that type of health messaging.

    As our findings show, these efforts may miss a stronger, even more enduring driver of youth tobacco use: the pervasive belief that tobacco use helps manage stress, anger and other difficult emotions. Our research highlights that emotional distress and the perception that tobacco use can help them cope with stress are central to why many adolescents begin and continue using these products, even when they are aware of the health risks.

    In this context, simply limiting access to tobacco products or repeating well-known health warnings will do little to address the underlying emotional motivations to use.

    We believe that to make meaningful progress, policy and prevention interventions will need to address the underlying motives for use, and not just focus on the harmful health effects of nicotine or means of access.

    This includes integrating emotional and behavioral health support into tobacco prevention strategies and expanding school-based and community mental health services. And while public health education campaigns such as The Real Cost have been successful in reducing the number of adolescents who begin using e-cigarettes, our findings suggest more emphasis on the emotional drivers of tobacco use is warranted.

    Adriana Espinosa receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (NCI and NIMHD).

    Lesia M. Ruglass receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS, NIDA, NCI, and NIMHD).

    – ref. Adolescents who smoke or vape may believe tobacco’s perceived coping benefits outweigh accepted health risks – https://theconversation.com/adolescents-who-smoke-or-vape-may-believe-tobaccos-perceived-coping-benefits-outweigh-accepted-health-risks-254294

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Older adults with dementia misjudge their financial skills – which may make them more vulnerable to fraud, new research finds

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ian McDonough, Associate Professor of Psychology, Binghamton University, State University of New York

    Older adults generally have a good sense of their own financial abilities – unless they have dementia. shapecharge/E+ via Getty Images

    Older adults diagnosed with dementia lose their ability to assess how well they manage their finances, according to a recent study I co-authored in The Gerontologist. In comparison, people of the same age who don’t have dementia are aware of their financial abilities – and this awareness improves over time.

    For our study, we used data from over 2,000 adults in the U.S. age 65 and older, collected during a long-term study on aging.
    We focused on how participants’ financial skills changed over time. The study began in 1998 and is still running, but we probed data collected between 1998 and 2009.

    Participants were assessed at one year, two years, five years and 10 years for their ability to carry out everyday tasks, including ones that required handling money. For example, they had to calculate the cost of a gym membership and a store discount rate, fill out part of a tax return and assess the cost of medical services. They also rated how well they thought they could do everyday financial tasks. Initially, none of the participants were diagnosed with dementia, but over the course of the decade, 87 participants, or 3.1%, received a dementia diagnosis.

    We found that even though participants’ performance on financial tasks declined as they aged, older adults who did not have dementia and older adults who had mild cognitive impairment were appropriately aware of their financial abilities. What’s more, that awareness increased over time. However, participants who were diagnosed with dementia during the study and experienced severe cognitive decline often misjudged how well they performed financial tasks.

    Financial scams targeting older adults are on the rise.

    The lack of insight into one’s cognitive abilities is called anosognosia. This study reveals a new type called financial anosognosia.

    Why it matters

    As people get older, their financial management skills start to deteriorate. The combination of a lifelong accumulation of wealth, declining financial abilities and a lack of awareness of those declines puts older adults at serious risk for financial scams.

    Few tools are available that can support families in helping cognitively impaired adults manage their finances. Our research suggests that there is a critical window of time after people begin to experience cognitive decline during which they are still aware of their financial abilities. We believe that this is when people can take action to secure their finances and develop systems to protect themselves from fraud.

    What still isn’t known

    Close friends or family members are often tempted to take away the financial autonomy of an older adult who is mismanaging their finances. However, that may not be the best solution, particularly for people who feel that handling their finances is a core part of their identity. More research is needed to identify how best to balance personal autonomy and the need to protect a person’s finances.

    What’s next

    This study used paper-and-pencil tasks to assess financial performance. But increasingly, many older adults are using online banking.

    E-banking simplifies many calculations, which may be helpful for older adults with declining cognition. However, e-banking can also make finances more of a black box, which may decrease a person’s awareness of their financial abilities. Furthermore, e-banking is constantly advancing, putting older adults at a disadvantage because they are more likely to be less cognitively flexible and to learn more slowly.

    We hope to explore whether older adults with and without cognitive decline have similar awareness of their ability to appropriately manage their finances online and identify potential financial scams.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    Ian McDonough receives funding from The National Institutes of Health.

    – ref. Older adults with dementia misjudge their financial skills – which may make them more vulnerable to fraud, new research finds – https://theconversation.com/older-adults-with-dementia-misjudge-their-financial-skills-which-may-make-them-more-vulnerable-to-fraud-new-research-finds-256973

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: RFK Jr’s shakeup of vaccine advisory committee raises worries about scientific integrity of health recommendations

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Santosh Kumar Gautam, Associate Professor of Development and Global Health Economics, University of Notre Dame

    The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices played a key role in the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images

    On June 11, 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a slate of eight new members to serve on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on national vaccine policy.

    The announcement, made on the social media platform X, comes two days after Kennedy removed all 17 of the serving committee members. Kennedy called their replacements “a bold step in restoring public trust” rooted in “radical transparency and gold standard science.”

    However, public health experts decried the removals, pointing to Kennedy’s promise not to change the committee and warning that the move politicizes its work and undermines its scientific integrity. Health experts have also noted that multiple new committee members appointed on June 11 have voiced anti-vaccine views that are not evidence-based.

    The Conversation U.S. asked Santosh Kumar Gautam, an expert in global health policy at the University of Notre Dame, to explain how the vaccine committee’s guidance has shaped vaccine recommendations for the public, and what the changes might mean for peoples’ ability to access vaccines in the future.

    What is the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices?

    The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, is a panel of experts appointed to advise the CDC on how to use vaccines to protect the health of people in the U.S. The committee’s job is to review multiple strands of scientific evidence to recommend which vaccines should be used, who should get them and when they should be given. Its guidance affects vaccine schedules for both children and adults, insurance coverage and public health policy across the country.

    The committee was formed in 1964 to establish national vaccine policy as federal immunization programs began to expand. It can have up to 19 voting members, who are appointed by the secretary of Health and Human Services. Members are experts in areas such as medicine, public health and immunology. Member usually serve overlapping four-year terms to ensure continuity. All 17 previous members were appointed at different times during the Biden administration. Removing all members of the committee at once is unprecedented.

    The group also includes nonvoting members from government health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. There are also representatives from more than 30 medical and public health organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians.

    These nonvoting members share useful information and real-world experience such as practical issues in administering vaccines in hospitals, management of vaccine side effects and insights into adverse events. Their input helps the committee make recommendations that reflect both science and practical needs.

    The committee meets three times a year to review new data on vaccine safety and effectiveness. Its next meeting is scheduled for June 25-27 and is expected to include discussions on COVID-19 and HPV vaccines, with recommendation votes planned for COVID-19 boosters, human papilloma virus and influenza vaccines. The meeting is open to the public and will be telecast live online.

    What is the committee’s role in vaccine policy?

    The committee makes its recommendations to the CDC by reviewing scientific evidence about a vaccine’s safety and efficacy, as well as practical issues, such as how easy a vaccine is to use, how it affects different groups, its side-effects and how it fits into the health system. The recommendations don’t just consider whether a vaccine works, but how it can be most effectively deployed to protect the American public from disease outbreaks.

    The new lineup of the vaccine advisory committee may lead to changes in children’s vaccine schedules.
    SementsovaLesia/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    The committee looks at data from clinical trials and other research to examine the most recent data on a vaccine’s safety, efficacy and use in everyday settings. When new vaccines come out or a change occurs in the way a disease spreads or behaves, the committee often revises its advice. It also responds to public health emergencies such as recent measles outbreaks in the U.S.

    The committee has made many updates over time. It changed flu shot guidance when new strains appeared. It lowered the recommended age for the HPV vaccine based on new research. And it adjusted vaccine plans for meningitis to better protect people at higher risk.

    What was the committee’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic?

    The committee played a vital role in evaluating vaccine safety and effectiveness and authorizing the use of vaccines for different age groups by reviewing clinical trial data, from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and other vaccine manufacturers.

    The committee also developed step-by-step guidelines for who should get vaccinated first, based on how likely people were to catch the virus, their risk of serious disease, the type of work they did and whether they came from a population that was historically underserved or at higher risk. It also issued tailored guidance for pregnant and breastfeeding women, immunocompromised people and children and adolescents as more trial data became available.

    These recommendations shaped vaccine rollout strategies at both national and state levels, guided insurance coverage and influenced COVID-19 vaccination policies in other countries around the world.

    Public health experts have expressed concern that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to replace all 17 members of the vaccine advisory committee will erode its ability to provide evidence-based guidance.

    Who are the new members that Kennedy appointed?

    Although Kennedy promised more transparency, he handpicked the advisory committee’s new members without revealing how they were selected. Historically, the body’s members are selected after an extensive vetting process that can take two years.

    The newly appointed members have expertise in psychiatry, neuroscience, epidemiology, biostatistics and operations management. However, several have been linked to vaccine-related misinformation, particularly relating to COVID-19 vaccines, raising concerns about the scientific neutrality of the committee moving forward.

    For example, Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at MIT Sloan School of Management, has publicly called for suspension of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, claiming they cause serious harm and death in young people – a statement not supported by evidence.

    Another member, physician and biochemist Robert Malone, made scientifically inaccurate statements about the dangers of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.

    A third member, epidemiologist and biostatistician Martin Kulldorff helped write the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed lockdowns and argued that people at low risk of severe illness or death should be allowed to contract COVID-19 to build natural immunity – a stance that was heavily debated among health experts.

    What happens now?

    The committee’s new makeup and Kennedy’s decades-long anti-vaccine stance threaten to erode the integrity of scientific decision-making and commitment to ethical standards in vaccine recommendations.

    Kennedy’s overhaul of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will likely affect how insurers, doctors and the public make decisions about vaccines – and vaccine policy generally. For example, the advisory committee’s decisions directly affect which vaccines are covered by health insurance. If a vaccine is not recommended by the committee, many insurance plans, including those under the Affordable Care Act, are not required to cover it. This means families could face out-of-pocket costs, making it harder for children to access routine immunizations.

    The advisory committee also plays a key role in shaping the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule. Given Kennedy’s long-held skepticism about childhood vaccines — including those for measles and polio — some public health experts worry that the newly appointed members could push to revisit or revise vaccine recommendations, especially for newer and more debated vaccines like those for COVID-19 or HPV.

    States usually base their school entry vaccine requirements on the committee’s guidelines, and insurers often use them to determine which vaccines are covered. As a result, shifts in policy to childhood vaccinations could influence both school vaccination mandates and access to vaccines for millions of children.

    Santosh Kumar Gautam 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.

    – ref. RFK Jr’s shakeup of vaccine advisory committee raises worries about scientific integrity of health recommendations – https://theconversation.com/rfk-jrs-shakeup-of-vaccine-advisory-committee-raises-worries-about-scientific-integrity-of-health-recommendations-258674

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Gen Z is struggling to find work: 4 strategies to move forward

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Leda Stawnychko, Associate Professor of Strategy and Organizational Theory, Mount Royal University

    As the school year comes to a close, young Canadians entering the job market are facing one of the toughest hiring seasons in years. Despite their drive to build careers and connections, many Gen Z are entering a stagnant job market.

    According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate for youth aged 15-24 is 12.2 per cent — over double that of the prime working-age population.

    The outlook is bleaker for students planning to return to full-time studies in the fall. Unemployment for this group has reached just over 20 per cent, the highest level since 2009, when the global economy was reeling from the Great Recession.

    Gen Zs without post-secondary credentials, people with disabilities and newcomers face steeper hurdles. They are competing in a labour market dominated by one of the world’s most highly educated generations.

    Today’s youth are navigating a perfect storm of persistent inflation, global trade tensions, a saturated labour market and restructuring driven by automation and AI.

    Unlike older workers, many young people lack the financial stability or support systems to pursue opportunities that require relocating.

    First jobs matter more than ever

    Early work experiences have long served as crucial stepping stones for young people entering the workforce. They offer new workers exposure to the habits, norms and expectations of the professional world.

    Roles in retail, hospitality and customer service often serve as a first taste of working life, helping young people build confidence, develop transferable skills and expand their professional networks. Without access to these opportunities, many young Canadians risk falling behind before their careers even begin.

    The long-term implications are serious. According to a 2024 report from consulting firm Deloitte, Canada stands to lose $18.5 billion in GDP over the next decade if youth unemployment remains high.

    Young Canadians are facing one of the toughest hiring seasons in years.
    (Shutterstock)

    More broadly, high unemployment among youth weakens social trust and undermines the foundations of social cohesion, long-term prosperity, democratic stability and leadership pipelines.

    Underemployment also takes a personal toll, contributing to poorer mental and physical health and delaying major life milestones like financial independence, homeownership and family formation.

    What Gen Z can do

    Many young job-seekers are understandably discouraged by today’s labour market. But as digital natives, Gen Z have advantages to bring to the table, including creativity, values-driven mindsets and fluency in technology.

    The key is to stay open, proactive and creative by pursuing non-linear experiences that can serve as legitimate entry points into the workforce. Here are four actionable strategies for Gen Z starting their careers:

    1. Think beyond traditional pathways.

    Unconventional roles and programs can offer valuable experience. For example, university students at Global Affairs Canada’s federal work experience program recently helped support the G7 Summit, gaining confidence and transferable skills.

    Side projects, such as building websites or freelancing, can also help people start their careers. These are increasingly recognized as valid ways to break into the job market.

    2. Build core skills that matter.

    The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report identifies analytical thinking, resilience, creativity, leadership and self-awareness as the most in-demand skills for the future. These can be developed through volunteer work, community leadership, mentorship or personal projects.

    Programs like International Experience Canada also help foster independence, global awareness and important skills.

    3. Invest in future-ready capabilities.

    As workplaces adopt AI and automation, tech literacy is becoming increasingly valuable. Microcredentials can help build specialized skills, while apprenticeships and other experiential learning opportunities offer experiences that employers value.



    Read more:
    Workplace besties: How to build relationships at work while staying professional

    4. Build meaningful connections.

    Networks are also a key part of job success. Relationships with peers, mentors and community members can provide support, broaden perspectives and lead to unexpected opportunities. Participating in interest groups or volunteering can help young workers feel more connected and confident while developing skills that matter.

    A new working generation

    While these steps won’t solve the systemic challenges facing the labour market, they can help young Canadians gain traction in a system that is still catching up to the needs of their generation.

    This will require the collaboration of government, employers, educational institutions and community service providers to innovatively reduce existing barriers. Importantly, these sectors are being asked to “walk the talk” when it comes to addressing youth unemployment.

    Gen Z is entering the workforce during a time of profound economic and social change. But they also have unparalleled access to information, supportive communities and platforms to share ideas and make a meaningful impact.

    By acting with intention, young Canadians can navigate this landscape with agency, laying the foundation not only for jobs but for careers that reflect their values and ambitions.

    Leda Stawnychko receives funding from SSHRC.

    Warren Boyd Ferguson 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.

    – ref. Gen Z is struggling to find work: 4 strategies to move forward – https://theconversation.com/gen-z-is-struggling-to-find-work-4-strategies-to-move-forward-259504

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Iran emerged weakened and vulnerable after war with Israel − and that could mean trouble for country’s ethnic minorities

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Shukriya Bradost, Ph.D. Student of Planning, Governance and Globalization, Virginia Tech

    Iranians celebrate the ceasefire in downtown Tehran, but many blame their own leaders for the escalation. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    The 12-day confrontation between Iran and Israel in June 2025 may not have escalated into a full-scale regional war, but it marks a potentially critical turning point in Iran’s internal political landscape.

    Though the Islamic Republic has entered into direct conflict with a foreign adversary before, it has never done so while so militarily weakened, internally fractured and increasingly alienated from its own population.

    And unlike the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when national unity coalesced around the defense of Iranian sovereignty, this time the government appeared to fight without significant public support. While accurate polling from within Iran is hard to come by, the lack of pro-government rallies, the low approval numbers for the government ahead of the war and the government’s subsequent crackdown since tell their own stories.

    As a researcher of different ethnic groups within the country, I know that many Iranians – especially those from historically marginalized communities – viewed the conflict with Israel not as a defense of the nation but as a reckless consequence of the government’s ideological adventurism and regional proxy campaigns. It puts the Islamic Republic in its most vulnerable position since its establishment after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

    Hard and soft power diminished

    It is worth taking a snapshot of just how diminished the Iranian government is following the recent series of blows.

    Its soft power – once built on revolutionary legitimacy, Shiite ideological influence and anti-Western propaganda – has eroded dramatically.

    For decades, the Islamic Republic relied on a powerful narrative: that it was the only government bold enough to confront the United States and Israel, defend Muslim causes globally and serve as the spiritual leader of the Islamic world. This image, projected through state media, proxy militias and religious rhetoric, helped the government justify its foreign interventions and massive military spending, particularly on nuclear development and regional militias.

    But that narrative no longer resonates the way it once did. The leaders of Iran can no longer claim to inspire unity at home or fear abroad. Even among Shiite populations in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, support during the Israel-Iran confrontation was muted. Inside Iran, meanwhile, propaganda portraying Israel as the existential enemy has lost its grip, especially among the youth, who increasingly identify with human rights movements rather than government slogans.

    It is also clear that Iran’s hard power is getting weaker. The loss of senior commanders and the destruction of important military infrastructure have shown that the government’s intelligence and security systems are severely compromised.

    Even before Israel’s attack, a number of reports showed that Iran’s military was in its weakest state in decades. The real surprise in the recent war came not from the scale of the damage by Israeli and U.S. bombs but from how deeply Israel had penetrated the upper echelons of the Iranian military and intelligence sectors. The recent conflict amounted to a security as well as a military failure.

    Externally defeated, internally adrift

    As its power across the region appears diminished, so too is the Iranian government’s grip loosening internally. A 2024 survey by Iran’s Ministry of Culture revealed “discontent” among the population, with over 90% of Iranians “dissatisfied” with the country’s current position. Elections in November 2024 saw a turnout of under 40%, further underscoring Iranians’ discontent with the political process.

    And reporting from inside Iran suggests many Iranians blame government policies for the war with Israel. “I place the blame on this country’s decision-makers,” one resident of Rasht told Reuters, “their policies have brought war and destruction upon us.”

    The government has responded with a tactic it has used before: repression. According to government-aligned media, over 700 people were arrested during and immediately after the conflict, accused of collaborating with the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

    As in past crackdowns, ethnic minority regions – particularly Kurdish areas – have been targeted.

    One day after the ceasefire with Israel, the government executed three Kurdish cross-border laborers who rely on smuggling goods to survive in Iran’s underdeveloped Kurdish provinces.

    These executions, which were done without a trial or legal counsel, fit a pattern of how the government uses ethnic scapegoating to stay in power. And it echoes a historic pattern: When the government feels threatened, it strikes the Kurds first.

    A historical pattern of repression

    Kurds are estimated to number 10-12 million in Iran, composing roughly 12% to 15% of the country’s total population – making them the third-largest ethnic group after Persians and Azeris. Iran also includes significant Baluch and Arab minorities.

    When the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, many ethnic groups supported the revolution. They hoped for a more inclusive and democratic Iran than what preceded it – the brutal autocracy of the shah that had frequently targeted minorities.

    Those hopes were quickly dashed. By rejecting pluralism and promoting a unifying ideology centered on Shiite Islam and Persian identity, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini marginalized non-Persian and non-Shiite groups.

    Other ethnic groups were viewed with suspicion, while Shiite Azerbaijanis were mainly co-opted into the system.

    Khomeini declared jihad against Kurdish resistance groups, labeling them infidels, separatists and agents of Israel and the United States.

    Armed with advanced weaponry inherited from the last Pahlavi shah, the government launched a military campaign in Kurdistan province. Many Kurdish villages and towns were destroyed, and approximately 50,000 Iranian Kurds were killed between 1979 and 1988.

    The region was turned into a militarized zone – a status that continues today.

    Campaign against Kurds

    After the Iran-Iraq war ended in August 1988, the government – economically strained and militarily weakened – feared a domestic uprising.

    But instead of embracing political reform, it responded with one of the most brutal crackdowns in Iran’s history. Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, ordering the execution of political prisoners, including large numbers of Kurdish dissidents.

    Between late July and September 1988, thousands of political prisoners were executed – many without trial or any legal process. At least 5,000 people were killed and buried in unmarked mass graves, according to Amnesty International.

    Khomeini labeled them “mohareb,” or “warriors against God,” and criticized the Revolutionary Courts for not sentencing them to death sooner. This mass execution campaign signaled the government’s resolve to eliminate all dissent, regardless of legal precedent or human rights norms.

    In the years that followed, the government systematically assassinated prominent Kurdish leaders and other opposition leaders, both in Iran and overseas.

    This targeted elimination of Kurdish leadership, combined with the mass executions of political prisoners, was a deliberate strategy to decapitate any organized opposition before it could challenge the government’s survival.

    A new crisis, the same strategy

    The Islamic Republic appears to be using the same playbook now, but under far more fragile conditions.

    Given the precarious state of the government, it is fair to ask why there are not more protests now, especially in ethnic minority regions. For many, the answer is fear over what happens next.

    Many Kurds have learned from previous uprisings – particularly the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” movement – that when they lead protests, they face the harshest crackdown. Over 56% of those killed and persecuted in the subsequent crackdown were Kurds.

    Meanwhile, the overall opposition remains fractured and leaderless, both along ethnic lines and in terms of goals. The main opposition groups have traditionally been reluctant to acknowledge ethnic rights, let alone include them in any vision for a future Iran. Rather, they insist on “territorial integrity” as a precondition for any dialogue, echoing the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric.

    This is a key legacy of the Islamic Republic: Its propaganda has not only shaped domestic opinion but also influenced the opposition, dividing Iranians at home and abroad. And it has long mobilized the dominant ethnic group against minorities, especially Kurds, by portraying them as internal enemies.

    Shukriya Bradost 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.

    – ref. Iran emerged weakened and vulnerable after war with Israel − and that could mean trouble for country’s ethnic minorities – https://theconversation.com/iran-emerged-weakened-and-vulnerable-after-war-with-israel-and-that-could-mean-trouble-for-countrys-ethnic-minorities-259753

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The UK has published a ten-year industrial strategy to boost key sectors of the economy – here’s what the experts think

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael A. Lewis, Professor of Operations and Supply Management, University of Bath

    PBabic/Shutterstock

    The UK government has published a ten-year strategy outlining how it aims to boost productivity and innovation across eight key sectors of the economy. From the future of AI to energy security and net zero, it’s a broad and ambitious plan. Our experts assess what it tells us about how the UK economy – and the jobs it offers – could look in future.

    Nuclear placed firmly in the centre of the UK’s low-carbon future

    Doug Specht, Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster

    For clean energy and industrial growth, the strategy presents an ambitious and comprehensive vision. And it seeks to establish the UK as a global leader in clean energy manufacturing and innovation. A key strength lies in its substantial investment commitments, however this includes £14.2 billion for the controversial Sizewell C nuclear power station and more than £2.5 billion for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme.

    Nuclear energy remains controversial – nevertheless, the strategy firmly places it as a central pillar for low-carbon, reliable energy and national security.

    The strategy also targets high-growth sectors, prioritises regional development and introduces support schemes and regulatory reforms to tackle high electricity costs for industry, and slow grid connections. Yet despite these potential strengths, there are notable challenges. Implementation risks are significant, given the ten-year timeframe and potential shifts in political priorities.

    And regional disparities and social inequalities may not be fully addressed, as the focus is on high-potential city regions. Some areas could be left behind. Skills shortages in engineering and digital sectors persist, and there is not enough detail on reskilling and lifelong learning. The importance of supply chain resilience, especially for the critical minerals needed for the green transition is acknowledged but not fully assured.

    Overall, the strategy is ambitious and well-structured. But a reliance on nuclear rather than true renewables is seeking a quick win with high risks and high costs. A more radical and inclusive plan that expanded green infrastructure, and provided details of resilient growth across all regions and sectors, would have been welcomed.



    Read more:
    Nuclear energy is a risky investment, but that’s no reason for the UK government to avoid it

    An innovation boost for the UK’s world-leading creative industries

    Bernard Hay, Head of Policy at the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, Newcastle University

    The plan for the creative industries is a significant step forward for this critical sector. With multiple new commitments announced on areas ranging from scale-up finance and AI to skills, exports and freelance support, there is a lot to welcome for the sector. After all, it already accounts for over 5% of the UK’s annual gross value added (or GVA – which measures the value of goods and services) and 14% of its services exports.

    One key aspect is boosting creative industries’ research and development (R&D), which is a driver of innovation, productivity and growth. This includes £100 million for the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s clusters programme, which supports location-based, creative R&D partnerships between universities and industry.

    And by the end of the year, HMRC will publish clarification on what types of activity are eligible for R&D tax relief, to include arts activities that meet certain criteria. This is a nuanced change, but together with the other plans, it could have a catalytic effect on innovation in the sector.

    Supporting regional creative economies is a golden thread running through this plan. A new £4 billion group capital initiative from the British Business Bank, announced earlier in the spending review, will be an important source of scale-up finance for small and medium-sized creative businesses that face barriers in accessing capital.

    It is also welcome to see the government both increasing creative industries investment in several city-regions and supporting places to join up and work together through “creative corridors”. Coupled with the ongoing devolution of powers and funding in England, the next decade provides a huge opportunity for local policy innovation. This includes sharing and scaling proven strategies in growing regional creative economies.

    An effective industrial strategy relies on high-quality data and analysis to support it. This is especially true when dealing with a rapidly evolving part of the economy such as the creative industries. The new plan includes commitments to strengthen the evidence base, including by increasing access to official statistics. This is good news not only for researchers, but for the whole sector.

    The Lowry in Salford is part of a creative cluster in the north-west of England.
    Debu55y/Shutterstock

    Advanced manufacturing: promising plans, but persistent problems

    Michael Lewis, Professor of Operations and Supply Management, University of Bath

    The government plans to invest £4.3 billion in advanced manufacturing. This covers research-driven production in sectors including automotive, aerospace and advanced materials (engineered substances that are especially useful in these industries). Some firms may also get energy cost relief through green levy exemptions.

    A long-term plan is overdue, but the challenges are huge. Automotive production is targeted to rise substantially, but the sector will still depend heavily on a range of critical imports. The aerospace sector will start 40,000 apprenticeships by 2035, yet further education funding remains below 2010 levels. Much of the promised investment appears to be the repackaging of existing funding.

    Most importantly, how to deliver these changes remains unclear. There are good ideas, like £99 million to expand the relatively successful Made Smarter Adoption programme to help small and medium-sized enterprises employ digital technology. But when helping small firms adopt basic digital tools counts as policy success, it shows how far UK manufacturing has fallen behind competitors. Likewise, when you need a new “connections accelerator service” just to help companies connect to the grid, it shows the scale of basic infrastructure problems that undermine grander ambitions.

    Overall, the strategy marks real progress. However, without clear delivery plans, it reads more like a wish list than an action plan. This explains why industry reactions have been cautiously optimistic at best.

    A chance to take the lead in the global AI race

    Kamran Mahroof, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Analytics and Programme Leader for the MSc in the Applied Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, University of Bradford

    From a digital and technologies perspective, the industrial strategy appears to signal a strong commitment to anchoring the nation at the forefront of the global AI race. The proposed Sovereign AI Unit shows an intent to ensure national control and access to critical AI infrastructure, computational power and expertise.

    This is pivotal, not only for research and development, but also for national security and economic resilience in an increasingly AI-driven world. It points to a recognition that relying solely on external providers for cutting-edge AI capabilities carries inherent risks.

    Besides, some of the world’s most innovative AI businesses are based in the UK. British companies are pushing the limits of what is feasible, from Synthesia’s advances in synthetic media to DeepMind’s developments in machine learning. In sectors including public safety, insurance and defence, smaller firms like Faculty, Tractable and Mind Foundry are also having a significant impact.

    Complementing this, the AI Growth Zones are designed to act as regional magnets for investment and innovation, particularly in the realm of data centres and high-density computational facilities. By streamlining planning and providing preferential access to energy, these zones could accelerate the development of the physical infrastructure needed.

    This decentralised approach has received more than 200 bids already from local authorities. It also has the potential to spread the economic benefits of AI beyond established tech hubs, encouraging new regional powerhouses and creating high-skilled jobs right across the UK.

    Taken as a whole, these projects show a deliberate effort to develop core competencies and draw in private-sector funding. This puts the UK in a position to benefit from AI’s potential. This effort to develop national AI capabilities is not a new idea – it echoes the US AI executive order and the EU’s AI Act.

    However, given the dominance of global tech giants, the UK needs to define “sovereignty” in practice and decide whether it is willing to provide large-scale funding. At a time when debates continue around the UK’s defence budget — a field now deeply intertwined with AI – more transparency is needed on how these ambitions will be funded.

    Growth plans for financial services – and moves to share the benefits beyond London

    Sarah Hall, 1931 Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge

    One of the most striking elements of the new plan is that it places financial services much more centrally compared to previous approaches.

    There are good reasons for doing this. Financial services are a vital component of the UK economy, contributing close to 9% of economic output in 2023. Clearly then, an industrial strategy without one of the most important economic sectors would make little sense.

    There is also a welcome emphasis on the ways in which financial services can grow, not only as a sector in its own right, but also to be better integrated in supporting the growth of other parts of the economy. Some important policy moves have already been announced, such as changes to pension funds aimed at increasing their investment in large infrastructure projects.

    In order to meet these ambitions, the strategy is right to note that financial services need to be supported, not only in London but also across the many clusters around the UK. These include, for example, Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol.

    There will be more details in the sector plan, released alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Mansion House speech on July 15. At that point, we will be able to assess the measures intended to grapple with two longstanding issues for UK financial services. That is, how does the government bridge the gap between finance and the “real” economy (goods and non-financial services)? And how does it bridge the gap between London and the rest of the UK?

    Michael A. Lewis receives funding from AHRC, EPSRC and ESRC.

    Bernard Hay is Head of Policy at the Creative PEC, a partnership between Newcastle University and the Royal Society of Arts, which is funded by the UKRI via Arts and Humanities Research Council.

    Sarah Hall receives funding from an ESRC Fellowship grant.

    Doug Specht and Kamran Mahroof do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The UK has published a ten-year industrial strategy to boost key sectors of the economy – here’s what the experts think – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-has-published-a-ten-year-industrial-strategy-to-boost-key-sectors-of-the-economy-heres-what-the-experts-think-259741

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The UK has published a ten-year industrial strategy to boost key sectors of the economy – here’s what the experts think

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael A. Lewis, Professor of Operations and Supply Management, University of Bath

    PBabic/Shutterstock

    The UK government has published a ten-year strategy outlining how it aims to boost productivity and innovation across eight key sectors of the economy. From the future of AI to energy security and net zero, it’s a broad and ambitious plan. Our experts assess what it tells us about how the UK economy – and the jobs it offers – could look in future.

    Nuclear placed firmly in the centre of the UK’s low-carbon future

    Doug Specht, Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster

    For clean energy and industrial growth, the strategy presents an ambitious and comprehensive vision. And it seeks to establish the UK as a global leader in clean energy manufacturing and innovation. A key strength lies in its substantial investment commitments, however this includes £14.2 billion for the controversial Sizewell C nuclear power station and more than £2.5 billion for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme.

    Nuclear energy remains controversial – nevertheless, the strategy firmly places it as a central pillar for low-carbon, reliable energy and national security.

    The strategy also targets high-growth sectors, prioritises regional development and introduces support schemes and regulatory reforms to tackle high electricity costs for industry, and slow grid connections. Yet despite these potential strengths, there are notable challenges. Implementation risks are significant, given the ten-year timeframe and potential shifts in political priorities.

    And regional disparities and social inequalities may not be fully addressed, as the focus is on high-potential city regions. Some areas could be left behind. Skills shortages in engineering and digital sectors persist, and there is not enough detail on reskilling and lifelong learning. The importance of supply chain resilience, especially for the critical minerals needed for the green transition is acknowledged but not fully assured.

    Overall, the strategy is ambitious and well-structured. But a reliance on nuclear rather than true renewables is seeking a quick win with high risks and high costs. A more radical and inclusive plan that expanded green infrastructure, and provided details of resilient growth across all regions and sectors, would have been welcomed.



    Read more:
    Nuclear energy is a risky investment, but that’s no reason for the UK government to avoid it

    An innovation boost for the UK’s world-leading creative industries

    Bernard Hay, Head of Policy at the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, Newcastle University

    The plan for the creative industries is a significant step forward for this critical sector. With multiple new commitments announced on areas ranging from scale-up finance and AI to skills, exports and freelance support, there is a lot to welcome for the sector. After all, it already accounts for over 5% of the UK’s annual gross value added (or GVA – which measures the value of goods and services) and 14% of its services exports.

    One key aspect is boosting creative industries’ research and development (R&D), which is a driver of innovation, productivity and growth. This includes £100 million for the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s clusters programme, which supports location-based, creative R&D partnerships between universities and industry.

    And by the end of the year, HMRC will publish clarification on what types of activity are eligible for R&D tax relief, to include arts activities that meet certain criteria. This is a nuanced change, but together with the other plans, it could have a catalytic effect on innovation in the sector.

    Supporting regional creative economies is a golden thread running through this plan. A new £4 billion group capital initiative from the British Business Bank, announced earlier in the spending review, will be an important source of scale-up finance for small and medium-sized creative businesses that face barriers in accessing capital.

    It is also welcome to see the government both increasing creative industries investment in several city-regions and supporting places to join up and work together through “creative corridors”. Coupled with the ongoing devolution of powers and funding in England, the next decade provides a huge opportunity for local policy innovation. This includes sharing and scaling proven strategies in growing regional creative economies.

    An effective industrial strategy relies on high-quality data and analysis to support it. This is especially true when dealing with a rapidly evolving part of the economy such as the creative industries. The new plan includes commitments to strengthen the evidence base, including by increasing access to official statistics. This is good news not only for researchers, but for the whole sector.

    The Lowry in Salford is part of a creative cluster in the north-west of England.
    Debu55y/Shutterstock

    Advanced manufacturing: promising plans, but persistent problems

    Michael Lewis, Professor of Operations and Supply Management, University of Bath

    The government plans to invest £4.3 billion in advanced manufacturing. This covers research-driven production in sectors including automotive, aerospace and advanced materials (engineered substances that are especially useful in these industries). Some firms may also get energy cost relief through green levy exemptions.

    A long-term plan is overdue, but the challenges are huge. Automotive production is targeted to rise substantially, but the sector will still depend heavily on a range of critical imports. The aerospace sector will start 40,000 apprenticeships by 2035, yet further education funding remains below 2010 levels. Much of the promised investment appears to be the repackaging of existing funding.

    Most importantly, how to deliver these changes remains unclear. There are good ideas, like £99 million to expand the relatively successful Made Smarter Adoption programme to help small and medium-sized enterprises employ digital technology. But when helping small firms adopt basic digital tools counts as policy success, it shows how far UK manufacturing has fallen behind competitors. Likewise, when you need a new “connections accelerator service” just to help companies connect to the grid, it shows the scale of basic infrastructure problems that undermine grander ambitions.

    Overall, the strategy marks real progress. However, without clear delivery plans, it reads more like a wish list than an action plan. This explains why industry reactions have been cautiously optimistic at best.

    A chance to take the lead in the global AI race

    Kamran Mahroof, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Analytics and Programme Leader for the MSc in the Applied Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, University of Bradford

    From a digital and technologies perspective, the industrial strategy appears to signal a strong commitment to anchoring the nation at the forefront of the global AI race. The proposed Sovereign AI Unit shows an intent to ensure national control and access to critical AI infrastructure, computational power and expertise.

    This is pivotal, not only for research and development, but also for national security and economic resilience in an increasingly AI-driven world. It points to a recognition that relying solely on external providers for cutting-edge AI capabilities carries inherent risks.

    Besides, some of the world’s most innovative AI businesses are based in the UK. British companies are pushing the limits of what is feasible, from Synthesia’s advances in synthetic media to DeepMind’s developments in machine learning. In sectors including public safety, insurance and defence, smaller firms like Faculty, Tractable and Mind Foundry are also having a significant impact.

    Complementing this, the AI Growth Zones are designed to act as regional magnets for investment and innovation, particularly in the realm of data centres and high-density computational facilities. By streamlining planning and providing preferential access to energy, these zones could accelerate the development of the physical infrastructure needed.

    This decentralised approach has received more than 200 bids already from local authorities. It also has the potential to spread the economic benefits of AI beyond established tech hubs, encouraging new regional powerhouses and creating high-skilled jobs right across the UK.

    Taken as a whole, these projects show a deliberate effort to develop core competencies and draw in private-sector funding. This puts the UK in a position to benefit from AI’s potential. This effort to develop national AI capabilities is not a new idea – it echoes the US AI executive order and the EU’s AI Act.

    However, given the dominance of global tech giants, the UK needs to define “sovereignty” in practice and decide whether it is willing to provide large-scale funding. At a time when debates continue around the UK’s defence budget — a field now deeply intertwined with AI – more transparency is needed on how these ambitions will be funded.

    Growth plans for financial services – and moves to share the benefits beyond London

    Sarah Hall, 1931 Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge

    One of the most striking elements of the new plan is that it places financial services much more centrally compared to previous approaches.

    There are good reasons for doing this. Financial services are a vital component of the UK economy, contributing close to 9% of economic output in 2023. Clearly then, an industrial strategy without one of the most important economic sectors would make little sense.

    There is also a welcome emphasis on the ways in which financial services can grow, not only as a sector in its own right, but also to be better integrated in supporting the growth of other parts of the economy. Some important policy moves have already been announced, such as changes to pension funds aimed at increasing their investment in large infrastructure projects.

    In order to meet these ambitions, the strategy is right to note that financial services need to be supported, not only in London but also across the many clusters around the UK. These include, for example, Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol.

    There will be more details in the sector plan, released alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Mansion House speech on July 15. At that point, we will be able to assess the measures intended to grapple with two longstanding issues for UK financial services. That is, how does the government bridge the gap between finance and the “real” economy (goods and non-financial services)? And how does it bridge the gap between London and the rest of the UK?

    Michael A. Lewis receives funding from AHRC, EPSRC and ESRC.

    Bernard Hay is Head of Policy at the Creative PEC, a partnership between Newcastle University and the Royal Society of Arts, which is funded by the UKRI via Arts and Humanities Research Council.

    Sarah Hall receives funding from an ESRC Fellowship grant.

    Doug Specht and Kamran Mahroof do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The UK has published a ten-year industrial strategy to boost key sectors of the economy – here’s what the experts think – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-has-published-a-ten-year-industrial-strategy-to-boost-key-sectors-of-the-economy-heres-what-the-experts-think-259741

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Climate, conflict and energy security – our research shows how the EU’s industrial policy must change to face this polycrisis

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Bärnthaler, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Ecological Economics, University of Leeds

    Green energy sites like Flevoland in the Netherlands will be part of the EU’s industrial future. fokke baarssen/Shutterstock

    Industrial policy is back – it’s currently central to the agendas of both the EU and the UK. This resurgence comes amid a polycrisis marked by climate breakdown, social inequality, energy insecurity and geopolitical instability. And it reflects a wider shift. Governments across G20 countries are stepping in more actively to shape their economies, moving away from the idea that markets should be left to run themselves.

    This is an important development. But current frameworks for industrial policy risk deepening the crises they are meant to solve.

    In our research with Sebastian Mang of the New Economics Foundation, we have found that in the case of the EU, its industrial policy framework is riddled with contradictions.

    It seeks resilience, yet fails to strengthen essential public services that underpin stability. It aims for strategic autonomy, yet reinforces resource dependencies. And while it gestures towards sustainability, it remains tethered to private-sector strategies that delay the phase-out of harmful industries.

    Eroding foundations

    EU industrial policy aims to strengthen the resilience of the bloc’s single market by preventing supply chain disruptions. It rightly views Europe’s economy as an interconnected ecosystem, where shocks in one sector ripple across others. But it fails to prioritise the foundational sectors that sustain everyday life. These include essential services such as food, utilities, housing, healthcare and public transport.

    Two core issues drive this failure. First, deregulation in the single market has often extended to essential services, pushing providers to operate like private businesses. For example, liberalisation of the energy sector has contributed to volatile prices and energy poverty. And EU competition law and state aid rules have historically constrained social housing provision.

    Yet social resilience — the capacity of communities to withstand and recover from crises — and, by extension market resilience, rely on these essential services. But affordable housing, universal healthcare and affordable energy for households are often not prioritised.

    Second, EU industrial policy lacks a clear definition of which sectors are “critical” and why. This results in inconsistent lists of priority industries and technologies, while foundational sectors like energy and housing often remain overlooked.

    These blind spots have real consequences. Around 40% of Europe’s workforce is employed in foundational sectors. These sectors are where low-income households spend about two-thirds of their income. Yet they often remain precarious and undervalued, leaving Europe more exposed to economic shocks.

    To build real resilience, industrial policy must reassert public control over essential services and recognise them as priorities. This means redefining what counts as “critical”, supporting jobs in foundational sectors and accelerating public investment. This investment could be enabled through measures such as reforming the fiscal rules and with joint borrowing by member states.

    The scramble for resources

    Europe is pushing for strategic autonomy (the capacity of the bloc to act in strategically important areas, without being dependent on non-member countries). The aim is to reduce reliance on imports in key industries such as green technology.

    But to make this happen, the EU should put reducing demand for resources and energy at the centre of its industrial policy. Instead, however, its Critical Raw Materials Act foresees skyrocketing consumption of rare earths, lithium and other inputs.

    This strategy is self-defeating. It increases the likelihood of European aggression towards the rest of the world and ultimately threatens long-term security and peace for all. These tensions are already surfacing. Export restrictions on things such as nickel, cobalt and rare earth minerals are multiplying. In an era of geopolitical ruptures, these tendencies are likely to intensify.

    At the same time, resource conflicts are also escalating within Europe itself. Tensions are emerging in countries including Serbia, Portugal and Greece over lithium and copper, and the environmental and social costs of mining them. And indigenous communities such as the Sámi in northern Europe face threats to their land and rights.

    This is not to argue against increasing the extraction of raw materials within Europe. However, without an absolute reduction in energy and material use, these contradictions will deepen. To avoid these problems, the EU must centre industrial policy on reducing unnecessary demand. Some key moves could include investing in public transport instead of subsidising cars, prioritising retrofitting over new building, ending planned obsolescence and backing agro-ecology over industrial farming.

    Investing in public rather than private transport will help European nations reduce their demand on energy and materials.
    The Global Guy/Shutterstock

    Research shows that this kind of strategy could significantly lower Europe’s energy use. It could also drastically cut reliance on critical imports and contribute to achieving energy independence by 2050. This is all without compromising basic quality of life.

    If Europe wants peace and security, demand reduction is a rational approach that must be at the heart of the EU’s industrial strategy. This should be adopted alongside strengthening ties of cooperation and integration with the rest of Eurasia and the global south, rather than ramping up antagonism towards these neighbours.

    Green transition

    The EU’s vision of “competitive sustainability” rests on the belief that market incentives and the private sector can drive the green transition. Yet despite decades of efficiency improvements, high-income countries have not decoupled material use and emissions from economic growth at the speed and scale required.

    The EU remains reliant on derisking – using public subsidies, guarantees and looser regulations to make green investments attractive to private finance. But as this approach leaves both the pace and direction of change to private capital, it slows the phase-out of harmful industries.

    What’s missing is more effective economic planning to restore public control over decarbonisation. Achieving this means building on existing mechanisms capable of delivering change — such as public credit guidance. This sets rules to limit the flow of finance from commercial banks to damaging sectors while directing investment toward sustainable ones.

    China offers an example whereby the central bank has used public credit guidance to shift finance to cleaner sectors. The European Central Bank also experimented with credit guidance between 2022 and 2023, introducing climate scores for companies. And post-war France used planned credit to modernise infrastructure over two decades.

    Europe and the UK are rearming, climate shocks are intensifying and global power dynamics are shifting. This moment demands a new industrial strategy — one that prioritises foundational sectors and creates fiscal space to build resilience. Reducing demand must be a prerequisite for security, peace and strategic autonomy. And reviving economic planning tools, such as public credit guidance, can accelerate the green transition.

    Without these shifts, Europe and the UK face an increasingly unstable future. Industrial policy must change because the stakes are existential.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Climate, conflict and energy security – our research shows how the EU’s industrial policy must change to face this polycrisis – https://theconversation.com/climate-conflict-and-energy-security-our-research-shows-how-the-eus-industrial-policy-must-change-to-face-this-polycrisis-259477

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Climate, conflict and energy security – our research shows how the EU’s industrial policy must change to face this polycrisis

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Bärnthaler, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Ecological Economics, University of Leeds

    Green energy sites like Flevoland in the Netherlands will be part of the EU’s industrial future. fokke baarssen/Shutterstock

    Industrial policy is back – it’s currently central to the agendas of both the EU and the UK. This resurgence comes amid a polycrisis marked by climate breakdown, social inequality, energy insecurity and geopolitical instability. And it reflects a wider shift. Governments across G20 countries are stepping in more actively to shape their economies, moving away from the idea that markets should be left to run themselves.

    This is an important development. But current frameworks for industrial policy risk deepening the crises they are meant to solve.

    In our research with Sebastian Mang of the New Economics Foundation, we have found that in the case of the EU, its industrial policy framework is riddled with contradictions.

    It seeks resilience, yet fails to strengthen essential public services that underpin stability. It aims for strategic autonomy, yet reinforces resource dependencies. And while it gestures towards sustainability, it remains tethered to private-sector strategies that delay the phase-out of harmful industries.

    Eroding foundations

    EU industrial policy aims to strengthen the resilience of the bloc’s single market by preventing supply chain disruptions. It rightly views Europe’s economy as an interconnected ecosystem, where shocks in one sector ripple across others. But it fails to prioritise the foundational sectors that sustain everyday life. These include essential services such as food, utilities, housing, healthcare and public transport.

    Two core issues drive this failure. First, deregulation in the single market has often extended to essential services, pushing providers to operate like private businesses. For example, liberalisation of the energy sector has contributed to volatile prices and energy poverty. And EU competition law and state aid rules have historically constrained social housing provision.

    Yet social resilience — the capacity of communities to withstand and recover from crises — and, by extension market resilience, rely on these essential services. But affordable housing, universal healthcare and affordable energy for households are often not prioritised.

    Second, EU industrial policy lacks a clear definition of which sectors are “critical” and why. This results in inconsistent lists of priority industries and technologies, while foundational sectors like energy and housing often remain overlooked.

    These blind spots have real consequences. Around 40% of Europe’s workforce is employed in foundational sectors. These sectors are where low-income households spend about two-thirds of their income. Yet they often remain precarious and undervalued, leaving Europe more exposed to economic shocks.

    To build real resilience, industrial policy must reassert public control over essential services and recognise them as priorities. This means redefining what counts as “critical”, supporting jobs in foundational sectors and accelerating public investment. This investment could be enabled through measures such as reforming the fiscal rules and with joint borrowing by member states.

    The scramble for resources

    Europe is pushing for strategic autonomy (the capacity of the bloc to act in strategically important areas, without being dependent on non-member countries). The aim is to reduce reliance on imports in key industries such as green technology.

    But to make this happen, the EU should put reducing demand for resources and energy at the centre of its industrial policy. Instead, however, its Critical Raw Materials Act foresees skyrocketing consumption of rare earths, lithium and other inputs.

    This strategy is self-defeating. It increases the likelihood of European aggression towards the rest of the world and ultimately threatens long-term security and peace for all. These tensions are already surfacing. Export restrictions on things such as nickel, cobalt and rare earth minerals are multiplying. In an era of geopolitical ruptures, these tendencies are likely to intensify.

    At the same time, resource conflicts are also escalating within Europe itself. Tensions are emerging in countries including Serbia, Portugal and Greece over lithium and copper, and the environmental and social costs of mining them. And indigenous communities such as the Sámi in northern Europe face threats to their land and rights.

    This is not to argue against increasing the extraction of raw materials within Europe. However, without an absolute reduction in energy and material use, these contradictions will deepen. To avoid these problems, the EU must centre industrial policy on reducing unnecessary demand. Some key moves could include investing in public transport instead of subsidising cars, prioritising retrofitting over new building, ending planned obsolescence and backing agro-ecology over industrial farming.

    Investing in public rather than private transport will help European nations reduce their demand on energy and materials.
    The Global Guy/Shutterstock

    Research shows that this kind of strategy could significantly lower Europe’s energy use. It could also drastically cut reliance on critical imports and contribute to achieving energy independence by 2050. This is all without compromising basic quality of life.

    If Europe wants peace and security, demand reduction is a rational approach that must be at the heart of the EU’s industrial strategy. This should be adopted alongside strengthening ties of cooperation and integration with the rest of Eurasia and the global south, rather than ramping up antagonism towards these neighbours.

    Green transition

    The EU’s vision of “competitive sustainability” rests on the belief that market incentives and the private sector can drive the green transition. Yet despite decades of efficiency improvements, high-income countries have not decoupled material use and emissions from economic growth at the speed and scale required.

    The EU remains reliant on derisking – using public subsidies, guarantees and looser regulations to make green investments attractive to private finance. But as this approach leaves both the pace and direction of change to private capital, it slows the phase-out of harmful industries.

    What’s missing is more effective economic planning to restore public control over decarbonisation. Achieving this means building on existing mechanisms capable of delivering change — such as public credit guidance. This sets rules to limit the flow of finance from commercial banks to damaging sectors while directing investment toward sustainable ones.

    China offers an example whereby the central bank has used public credit guidance to shift finance to cleaner sectors. The European Central Bank also experimented with credit guidance between 2022 and 2023, introducing climate scores for companies. And post-war France used planned credit to modernise infrastructure over two decades.

    Europe and the UK are rearming, climate shocks are intensifying and global power dynamics are shifting. This moment demands a new industrial strategy — one that prioritises foundational sectors and creates fiscal space to build resilience. Reducing demand must be a prerequisite for security, peace and strategic autonomy. And reviving economic planning tools, such as public credit guidance, can accelerate the green transition.

    Without these shifts, Europe and the UK face an increasingly unstable future. Industrial policy must change because the stakes are existential.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Climate, conflict and energy security – our research shows how the EU’s industrial policy must change to face this polycrisis – https://theconversation.com/climate-conflict-and-energy-security-our-research-shows-how-the-eus-industrial-policy-must-change-to-face-this-polycrisis-259477

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Why experts expect Russian interference in upcoming election on Ukraine’s borders

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

    When Moldovans go to the polls in parliamentary elections on September 28, it will be the third time in less than a year – after a referendum on future EU membership and presidential elections last autumn.

    In both of the recent elections pro-European forces scraped to victory, thanks to a strong turnout among Moldovan diaspora voters, primarily in western Europe and north America. And in both elections, Russian interference was a significant factor. This is unlikely to change in the upcoming parliamentary vote. Moldova is too important a battleground in Russia’s campaign to rebuild a Soviet-style sphere of influence in eastern Europe.

    Wedged between EU and Nato member Romania to the west and Ukraine to the east, Moldova has its own aspirations for EU accession. But with a breakaway region in Transnistria, which is host to a Russian military base and “peacekeeping force” and whose population is leaning heavily towards Russia, this will not be a straightforward path to membership.

    What’s more, a Euro-sceptic and Moscow-friendly government after the next elections might allow the Kremlin to increase its military presence in the region and thereby pose a threat not only to Ukraine but also to Romania. While not quite equivalent to Russia’s unsinkable aircraft carrier of Kaliningrad, a more Russia-friendly Moldovan government would be a major strategic asset for Moscow.

    Unsurprisingly, Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, and her Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky have little doubt that further destabilisation is at the top of Russia’s agenda. Fears about a Russian escalation in the months before the elections are neither new nor unfounded.

    There were worries that Moldova and Transnistria might be next on the Kremlin’s agenda as far back as the aftermath of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. These worries resurfaced when Moscow, rather prematurely, announced the beginning of stage two of its war against Ukraine in late April, 2022.

    Russia’s hopes of capturing all of southern Ukraine may not have materialised yet, but they are not off the Kremlin’s agenda. And a track record of false-flag operations in Transnistria and a coup attempt in Moldova do not bode well in the run-up to the elections.

    Knife-edge elections are nothing new in Moldova. The country is not only physically divided along the river Nistru, but even in the territory controlled by the government, opinions over its future geopolitical orientation remain split.

    With no pre-1991 history of independent statehood, parts of Moldova were part of Ukraine, Romania and the Soviet Union. Russian is widely spoken and, while declining in number, Moldovan labour migrants to Russia remain important contributors of remittances, which accounted for over 12 percent of the country’s GDP in 2023.

    A large number of Moldovans are, therefore, not keen on severing all ties with Russia. This does not mean they are supporters of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine or opponents of closer relations with the European Union. But as the referendum and presidential elections in October 2024, if pushed to make a choice between Russia and Europe and manipulated by Russian fear-mongering and vote buying, pro-European majorities remain slim.

    This is despite the significant support that the EU has provided to Moldova, including €1.9 billion (£1.6 billion) in financial support to facilitate reforms as part of the country’s efforts to join the EU. And there’s also nearly €200 million in military assistance over the past four years, including a €20 million package for improved air defences announced in April.

    Russian interference in the 2024 election was well documented.

    The EU has also provided several emergency aid packages to assist the country’s population during repeated energy crises triggered by Russia. Since then, the Moldovans and Brussels have agreed on comprehensive energy strategy that will make the country immune to Russian blackmail.

    This pattern of competitive influence seeking by Russia and the EU is long-standing and has not produced any decisive, lasting breakthroughs for either side.

    When the current president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won in 2020, she defeated her opponent, Igor Dodon, by a decisive 58% to 42% margin, equivalent to some 250,000 votes that separated the candidates in the second round. Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) obtained almost 53% of votes in the 2021 parliamentary elections and gained 63 seats in the 101-seat parliament. Not since the 2005 elections, won by the communist party under then-president Vladimir Voronin, had there been a a majority single-party government in Moldova. According to current opinion polls, PAS remains the strongest party with levels of support between 27% and 37%.

    In a crowded field of political parties and their leaders in which disappointment and doubt are the prevailing negative emotions among the electorate, Sandu and PAS remain the least unpopular choices. They have weathered the fall-out from the war in Ukraine well so far – managing the influx of refugees, keeping relations with Transnistria stable, and steering Moldova through a near-constant cost-of-living and energy crisis. Anti-government protests in 2022-23 eventually fizzled out.

    Russia’s election interference in 2024 was ultimately not successful in cheating pro-European voters out of their victories in the presidential elections and the referendum on future EU membership. But this is unlikely to stop the Kremlin from trying again in the run-up to parliamentary elections in September.

    Moscow will try to disrupt and delay Moldova’s already bumpy road to EU membership. A weakened pro-European government after parliamentary elections would be a very useful tool for Russia. Moldova and its European allies are in for an unusually hot summer.

    Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

    – ref. Why experts expect Russian interference in upcoming election on Ukraine’s borders – https://theconversation.com/why-experts-expect-russian-interference-in-upcoming-election-on-ukraines-borders-258445

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: China is constructing a new hero cult – here’s why that matters

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vincent K.L. Chang, Assistant Professor of the History and International Relations of Modern China, Leiden University

    A tour guide competition was held in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late May. This was not some fun contest. According to Chinese state media, it was a carefully conceived effort to “attract and cultivate a group of politically firm and professionally skilled storytellers of heroes and martyrs in the new era”.

    It symbolises the ambitious and far-reaching campaign launched by the Chinese state to revive the country’s pantheon of national heroes and martyrs. The aim is to unite and mobilise the nation in what Chinese leadership see as the crucial final phase in the quest to become a modern global superpower.

    On the same day as the Wuhan competition, but 750 miles further inland in Sichuan province, children from a kindergarten gathered with martyrs’ family members to engage in traditional crafts. The official newspaper of the Chinese Communist party, the People’s Daily, explained how this activity helped “pass on the torch of heroes” to young generations.

    And two weeks earlier, in China’s eastern province of Shandong, representatives from the official state news agency, Xinhua, attended an immersive training session on hero spirit. By coming “face to face” with heroes of the past, the trainees were able to grasp the “spirit” that had guided the extraordinary deeds of these ordinary people.

    This “facing up” to past heroes increasingly takes place through digital means. Thanks to developments in AI, and with the help of universities, museums and various government units, numerous Chinese people have now been “reunited” or become “acquainted” with family members martyred decades ago.

    Activities such as these have become commonplace in recent years. They are encouraged, guided and overseen by an expanding architecture of laws and regulations. There are at least two reasons why the campaign to build a new “spirit” of heroism and sacrifice requires attention beyond China-watchers.

    Chinese memory politics

    The first reason is the increasingly global reach of the campaign. Just as China’s economic statecraft is affecting global trade and finance, so too are Chinese memory politics spreading across the globe and reshaping the transnational memory landscape.

    Beijing has become an active sponsor of commemorations that are concerned more with shaping the future than looking into the past. Recent examples include Victory Day celebrations in Moscow and Minsk, and joint commemorations in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, of the Chinese “martyrs” of Nato’s bombing of the Chinese embassy there in 1999.



    Read more:
    Russia-China ties on full display on Victory Day – but all is not as well as Putin is making out

    China is also fostering bilateral memory partnerships in south-east Asia and Africa. And it has even resorted to memory diplomacy in seeking improved relations with the US by invoking the spirit of Sino-US cooperation during the second world war.

    China’s historical statecraft operates globally in the legal realm, too. Laws have come into effect that aim to promote patriotism and spread “core socialist values” among Chinese communities worldwide.

    Chinese embassies and consulates are required to locate Chinese martyrs buried in their host jurisdictions, and erect and maintain memorials for them. They are also expected to organise commemorations involving local Chinese diasporic and expat communities.

    Recent laws have been used to detain Chinese citizens living abroad. One example is Chinese artist Gao Zhen. Gao had been a permanent US resident for 13 years when he was detained in China in 2024 for his critical depictions of Mao Zedong a decade earlier.

    Gao was charged with the crime of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” under a law that did not exist when he created and exhibited his artwork.

    The second reason why China’s martyrs and heroes campaign matters globally is possibly more disturbing. China has become an example of a growing body of cases where state actors seek to shape and control historical memory.

    With several democracies beginning to show signs of democratic backsliding, the Chinese case is one of many that show that polar distinctions between “liberal” and “illiberal” systems are untenable.

    Perhaps the most obvious example of a democracy in democratic recession is the US. Donald Trump, a constitutionally elected president, is relying on a series of executive orders to consolidate power and hamper critical debate.

    One such directive, issued late in Trump’s first term, entails a proposal to build a so-called “national garden of American heroes”. The proposal was revived recently with an executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history”.

    The order aims to remove what the administration deems divisive and anti-American ideologies from national museums and public monuments.

    Washington’s efforts to control how history is presented seem to come straight out of Beijing’s playbook. In 2020, during his July 4 address, Trump claimed: “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”

    These words eerily resemble those used previously by Chinese president Xi Jinping to justify his campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism” – attempts to “destroy” the Chinese nation by eradicating its history.

    Memory laws have also been adopted across Europe. The European Parliament, for example, has codified its own historical interpretations of the causes of the second world war in an attempt to counter what it labels Russian disinformation.

    The causes and consequences of war have always been and will continue to be hotly debated among historians, and there is no need for the EU’s bureaucracy to unilaterally “resolve” these debates.

    A problem with these bureaucratic efforts to codify historical interpretation is that they feed memory wars and fuel escalation. Even more damaging is that they emulate authoritarian practices of “dictating” history and restricting debate.

    These examples show that distinctions between authoritarian and democratic regimes are not as pristine as is often claimed. Increasingly, global memory practices are evolving and possibly converging on a fluid spectrum between these two poles.

    China’s new hero cult is an important case for shedding light on these dynamics.

    Vincent K.L. Chang receives research funding from the Dutch government.

    – ref. China is constructing a new hero cult – here’s why that matters – https://theconversation.com/china-is-constructing-a-new-hero-cult-heres-why-that-matters-259075

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: China is constructing a new hero cult – here’s why that matters

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vincent K.L. Chang, Assistant Professor of the History and International Relations of Modern China, Leiden University

    A tour guide competition was held in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late May. This was not some fun contest. According to Chinese state media, it was a carefully conceived effort to “attract and cultivate a group of politically firm and professionally skilled storytellers of heroes and martyrs in the new era”.

    It symbolises the ambitious and far-reaching campaign launched by the Chinese state to revive the country’s pantheon of national heroes and martyrs. The aim is to unite and mobilise the nation in what Chinese leadership see as the crucial final phase in the quest to become a modern global superpower.

    On the same day as the Wuhan competition, but 750 miles further inland in Sichuan province, children from a kindergarten gathered with martyrs’ family members to engage in traditional crafts. The official newspaper of the Chinese Communist party, the People’s Daily, explained how this activity helped “pass on the torch of heroes” to young generations.

    And two weeks earlier, in China’s eastern province of Shandong, representatives from the official state news agency, Xinhua, attended an immersive training session on hero spirit. By coming “face to face” with heroes of the past, the trainees were able to grasp the “spirit” that had guided the extraordinary deeds of these ordinary people.

    This “facing up” to past heroes increasingly takes place through digital means. Thanks to developments in AI, and with the help of universities, museums and various government units, numerous Chinese people have now been “reunited” or become “acquainted” with family members martyred decades ago.

    Activities such as these have become commonplace in recent years. They are encouraged, guided and overseen by an expanding architecture of laws and regulations. There are at least two reasons why the campaign to build a new “spirit” of heroism and sacrifice requires attention beyond China-watchers.

    Chinese memory politics

    The first reason is the increasingly global reach of the campaign. Just as China’s economic statecraft is affecting global trade and finance, so too are Chinese memory politics spreading across the globe and reshaping the transnational memory landscape.

    Beijing has become an active sponsor of commemorations that are concerned more with shaping the future than looking into the past. Recent examples include Victory Day celebrations in Moscow and Minsk, and joint commemorations in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, of the Chinese “martyrs” of Nato’s bombing of the Chinese embassy there in 1999.



    Read more:
    Russia-China ties on full display on Victory Day – but all is not as well as Putin is making out

    China is also fostering bilateral memory partnerships in south-east Asia and Africa. And it has even resorted to memory diplomacy in seeking improved relations with the US by invoking the spirit of Sino-US cooperation during the second world war.

    China’s historical statecraft operates globally in the legal realm, too. Laws have come into effect that aim to promote patriotism and spread “core socialist values” among Chinese communities worldwide.

    Chinese embassies and consulates are required to locate Chinese martyrs buried in their host jurisdictions, and erect and maintain memorials for them. They are also expected to organise commemorations involving local Chinese diasporic and expat communities.

    Recent laws have been used to detain Chinese citizens living abroad. One example is Chinese artist Gao Zhen. Gao had been a permanent US resident for 13 years when he was detained in China in 2024 for his critical depictions of Mao Zedong a decade earlier.

    Gao was charged with the crime of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” under a law that did not exist when he created and exhibited his artwork.

    The second reason why China’s martyrs and heroes campaign matters globally is possibly more disturbing. China has become an example of a growing body of cases where state actors seek to shape and control historical memory.

    With several democracies beginning to show signs of democratic backsliding, the Chinese case is one of many that show that polar distinctions between “liberal” and “illiberal” systems are untenable.

    Perhaps the most obvious example of a democracy in democratic recession is the US. Donald Trump, a constitutionally elected president, is relying on a series of executive orders to consolidate power and hamper critical debate.

    One such directive, issued late in Trump’s first term, entails a proposal to build a so-called “national garden of American heroes”. The proposal was revived recently with an executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history”.

    The order aims to remove what the administration deems divisive and anti-American ideologies from national museums and public monuments.

    Washington’s efforts to control how history is presented seem to come straight out of Beijing’s playbook. In 2020, during his July 4 address, Trump claimed: “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”

    These words eerily resemble those used previously by Chinese president Xi Jinping to justify his campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism” – attempts to “destroy” the Chinese nation by eradicating its history.

    Memory laws have also been adopted across Europe. The European Parliament, for example, has codified its own historical interpretations of the causes of the second world war in an attempt to counter what it labels Russian disinformation.

    The causes and consequences of war have always been and will continue to be hotly debated among historians, and there is no need for the EU’s bureaucracy to unilaterally “resolve” these debates.

    A problem with these bureaucratic efforts to codify historical interpretation is that they feed memory wars and fuel escalation. Even more damaging is that they emulate authoritarian practices of “dictating” history and restricting debate.

    These examples show that distinctions between authoritarian and democratic regimes are not as pristine as is often claimed. Increasingly, global memory practices are evolving and possibly converging on a fluid spectrum between these two poles.

    China’s new hero cult is an important case for shedding light on these dynamics.

    Vincent K.L. Chang receives research funding from the Dutch government.

    – ref. China is constructing a new hero cult – here’s why that matters – https://theconversation.com/china-is-constructing-a-new-hero-cult-heres-why-that-matters-259075

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Five surprising facts about AI chatbots that can help you make better use of them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cagatay Yildiz, Postdoctoral Researcher, Cluster of Excellence “Machine Learning”, University of Tübingen

    Robert Way / Shutterstock

    AI chatbots have already become embedded into some people’s lives, but how many really know how they work? Did you know, for example, ChatGPT needs to do an internet search to look up events later than June 2024? Some of the most surprising information about AI chatbots can help us understand how they work, what they can and can’t do, and so how to use them in a better way.

    With that in mind, here are five things you ought to know about these breakthrough machines.

    1. They are trained by human feedback

    AI chatbots are trained in multiple stages, beginning with something called pre-training, where models are trained to predict the next word in massive text datasets. This allows them to develop a general understanding of language, facts and reasoning.

    If asked: “How do I make a homemade explosive?” in the pre-training phase, a model might have given a detailed instruction. To make them useful and safe for conversation, human “annotators” help guide the models toward safer and more helpful responses, a process called alignment.

    After alignment, an AI chatbot might answer something like: “I’m sorry, but I can’t provide that information. If you have safety concerns or need help with legal chemistry experiments, I recommend referring to certified educational sources.”

    Without alignment, AI chatbots would be unpredictable, potentially spreading misinformation or harmful content. This highlights the crucial role of human intervention in shaping AI behaviour.

    OpenAI, the company which developed ChatGPT, has not disclosed how many employees have trained ChatGPT for how many hours. But it is clear that AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, need a moral compass so that it does not spread harmful information. Human annotators rank responses to ensure neutrality and ethical alignment.

    Similarly, if an AI chatbot was asked: “What are the best and worst nationalities?” Human annotators would rank a response like this the highest: “Every nationality has its own rich culture, history, and contributions to the world. There is no ‘best’ or ‘worst’ nationality – each one is valuable in its own way.”



    Read more:
    Where did the wonder go – and can AI help us find it?

    2. They don’t learn through words – but with the help of tokens

    Humans naturally learn language through words, whereas AI chatbots rely on smaller units called tokens. These units can be words, subwords or obscure series of characters.

    While tokenisation generally follows logical patterns, it can sometimes produce unexpected splits, revealing both the strengths and quirks of how AI chatbots interpret language. Modern AI chatbots’ vocabularies typically consist of 50,000 to 100,000 tokens.

    The sentence “The price is $9.99.” is tokenised by ChatGPT as “The”, “ price”, “is”, “$” “ 9”, “.”, “99”, whereas “ChatGPT is marvellous” is tokenised less intuitively: “chat”, “G”, “PT”, “ is”, “mar”, “vellous”.

    Human feedback is used in the training of AI chatbots.
    Thapana_Studio / Shutterstock

    3. Their knowledge is outdated every passing day

    AI chatbots do not continuously update themselves; hence, they may struggle with recent events, new terminology or broadly anything after their knowledge cutoff. A knowledge cut-off refers to the last point in time when an AI chatbot’s training data was updated, meaning it lacks awareness of events, trends or discoveries beyond that date.

    The current version of ChatGPT has its cutoff on June 2024. If asked who is the currently president of the United States, ChatGPT would need to perform a web search using the search engine Bing, “read” the results, and return an answer. Bing results are filtered by relevance and reliability of the source. Likewise, other AI chatbots uses web search to return up-to-date answers.

    Updating AI chatbots is a costly and fragile process. How to efficiently update their knowledge is still an open scientific problem. ChatGPT’s knowledge is believed to be updated as Open AI introduces new ChatGPT versions.

    4. They hallucinate really easily

    AI chatbots sometimes “hallucinate”, generating false or nonsensical claims with confidence because they predict text based on patterns rather than verifying facts. These errors stem from the way they work: they optimise for coherence over accuracy, rely on imperfect training data and lack real world understanding.

    While improvements such as fact-checking tools (for example, like ChatGPT’s Bing search tool integration for real-time fact-checking) or prompts (for example, explicitly telling ChatGPT to “cite peer-reviewed sources” or “say I don ́t know if you are not sure”) reduce hallucinations, they can’t fully eliminate them.

    For example, when asked what the main findings are of a particular research paper, ChatGPT gives a long, detailed and good-looking answer.

    It also included screenshots and even a link, but from the wrong academic papers. So users should treat AI-generated information as a starting point, not an unquestionable truth.

    5. They use calculators to do maths

    A recently popularised feature of AI chatbots is called reasoning. Reasoning refers to the process of using logically connected intermediate steps to solve complex problems. This is also known as “chain of thought” reasoning.

    Instead of jumping directly to an answer, chain of thought enables AI chatbots to think step by step. For example, when asked “what is 56,345 minus 7,865 times 350,468”, ChatGPT gives the right answer. It “understands” that the multiplication needs to occur before the subtraction.

    To solve the intermediate steps, ChatGPT uses its built-in calculator that enables precise arithmetic. This hybrid approach of combining internal reasoning with the calculator helps improve reliability in complex tasks.

    Cagatay Yildiz receives funding from DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, in English German Research Foundation)

    – ref. Five surprising facts about AI chatbots that can help you make better use of them – https://theconversation.com/five-surprising-facts-about-ai-chatbots-that-can-help-you-make-better-use-of-them-259603

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The psychology of debt in Squid Game – and what your love or hatred of the show means

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Edward White, PhD Candidate in Psychology, Kingston University

    “Mister. Would you like to play a game with me?” These seemingly innocuous words to debt-ridden Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae) by a mysterious recruiter (Gong-Yoo) lead him to an opportunity for financial salvation – at the expense of human lives, including possibly his own.

    Squid Game’s third and final season has now been released, and fans can’t wait to see more green tracksuits and brutal games. But here’s what’s really driving the obsession: the show perfectly captures how financial stress warps our minds. It reveals the dark psychology of how money problems affect every decision we make.

    As a researcher studying the intersection of cognitive psychology and media dissemination, I’ve been fascinated by Squid Game’s unprecedented global impact. My work on how emotional regulation affects decision-making and moral reasoning provides a unique lens for understanding why this particular show resonated so powerfully with audiences worldwide. Especially during a time of economic uncertainty.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Scientists have discovered that financial stress decreases cognitive function. Recent research analysing more than 111,000 people found that financial stress reduced their performance when completing basic tasks.

    This isn’t about poorer people being less intelligent, but rather an effect called “bandwidth hijacking” that causes mental fatigue when worrying about rent and debt. Worrying about unpaid bills mean less processing power is left for anything else, including moral reasoning and long-term thinking.

    Sounds familiar? This research is brought to life in Squid Game. Take Sang-woo, (Park Hae-soo) in season one. The brilliant Seoul National University graduate’s crippling debt (caused by bad investments) leads him to become a participant in the brutal Squid Games. Abandoning the etiquette of his high-flying circles, he manipulates and maliciously betrays fellow contestant Ali (Anupam Tripathi) in the marble game, pushes a man to his death on the glass bridge, and ultimately tries to kill his childhood friend, Gi-hun.

    Sang-woo’s intelligence becomes laser-focused on survival, leaving no mental space for the moral reasoning that would typically guide his decisions.

    The trailer for Squid Game season three.

    Squid Game shows how financial desperation dehumanises people. Bodies have piled up throughout the seasons, but the players barely react to the carnage. They’re transfixed by something else entirely: the digital display showing their prize money growing with each death.

    Such reminders of the financial stakes lead to reduced requests for help and reduced help towards others. This “tunnel vision” phenomenon occurs in real life too, leading to the abandonment of empathy and moral considerations.

    Sang-woo doesn’t betray Ali because he’s evil – he does it because financial desperation has hijacked his moral reasoning. Look at Ali’s face during the marble game: confused, trusting, unable to process that his “hyung” (older brother, a term of respect) would manipulate him. Ali represents what we lose when desperation turns humans into competitors rather than a community.

    Even Gi-hun, the supposed moral centre of the show, experiences this. When he and elderly contestant Il-nam (O Yeong-su) play marbles, Gi-hun lies and manipulates the old man he’s grown to care about. The extreme pressure – both financial and mortal – has consumed so much of his cognitive bandwidth that even basic human compassion becomes secondary to survival.

    Why we couldn’t look away

    Squid Game season one premiered during the COVID pandemic when millions around the world faced unemployment, eviction and financial ruin. Suddenly, extreme economic scenarios didn’t feel so remote. Audiences weren’t just watching entertainment – they saw their own psychological struggles reflected back at them.

    The show has been such a success because it reveals uncomfortable truths about how money doesn’t just change what we can do, but fundamentally alters who we become when survival depends on it.

    Every character in Squid Game represents a different response to economic trauma. Take season one. Gi-hun tries to maintain his humanity but repeatedly compromises (lying to his mother about money, manipulating Il-nam). Sang-woo sacrifices everything for survival (from securities fraud to literal murder). And some find strength in solidarity, as in Sae-byeok (HoYeon Jung) and Ji-yeong’s (Lee Yoo-mi) heartbreaking marble game, where Ji-yeong deliberately loses because Sae-byeok has more to live for.

    The genius is in the details. Players refer to each other by numbers instead of names, a metaphor for how economic systems reduce humans to data points. The guards wear masks, becoming faceless enforcers of the system. Even the organ-harvesting subplot shows how far commodification can go, turning human bodies into black market goods.

    Three seasons later, Squid Game itself has become a commodity. Netflix turned an anti-capitalist critique into a billion-dollar franchise, complete with reality TV spinoffs that recreate the exploitation of the show (without the murder!) in real life. Game shows offer high-risk, high-reward opportunities, where people admire the boldness and accept that unethical behaviour should not be vilified but encouraged.

    The spectacle of humiliation is normalised by the genre’s focus on competition and transformation. Failure becomes entertainment, as is echoed in the show itself by the VIPs who, so bored with their wealth, place bets on human lives for “fun”.

    Research has also found that people who enjoy reality TV are more likely to feel self-important, vindicated, or free from moral constraints. They are attracted to shows that stimulate these values.

    What your Squid Game obsession or hatred means

    If you’re fascinated by Squid Game, it isn’t just morbid curiosity at play – it’s recognition. On some level, it’s likely that you understand that the psychological pressure cooker of the games reflects real mechanisms happening in your own life when money gets tight.

    If you found yourself repulsed by the violence or bored by the hype, your reaction may reveal something important about how you process economic anxiety. Research on adult viewers shows that people with stronger financial security and emotional regulation are more likely to avoid media content that triggers economic stress responses. Others dismiss it as “unrealistic” – what psychologists call “optimism-bias”, where you may unconsciously distance yourself from economic vulnerability.

    Modern research confirms that financial scarcity creates measurable changes in how we think, plan and relate to others. The show’s genius was amplifying these subtle psychological effects to their logical extreme.

    In a world where economic inequality continues to rise, Squid Game isn’t just entertainment – it’s a mirror for our collective financial anxieties.

    Edward White is affiliated with Kingston University.

    – ref. The psychology of debt in Squid Game – and what your love or hatred of the show means – https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-debt-in-squid-game-and-what-your-love-or-hatred-of-the-show-means-259941

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Netflix drama ‘Secrets We Keep’ exposes the dangers of domestic migrant work

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Reena Kukreja, Associate Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario

    In Secrets We Keep, the hidden world of domestic work and abuse is exposed. Here Excel Busano who plays Angel, Cecilia’s au pair and Ruby’s best friend in Denmark speaks with her community on the phone. Tine Harden/Netflix

    Secrets We Keep (Reservatet), a Danish suspense series on Netflix created by Ingeborg Topsøe, delves into the disappearance of a Filipina au pair from an elite suburb of Copenhagen — and delivers a sharp social commentary on racial and class entitlements.

    Moving fluidly between English, Danish and Tagalog, the six-part drama is a nuanced indictment of the lack of moral accountability among the rich. On display are the prejudices and complicity of white women in enabling a culture of toxic masculinity that treats Filipina migrant women as sexualized and disposable commodities.

    The story starts with a tearful Ruby Tan — a Filipina au pair who works for the affluent Rasmus (Lars Ranthe) and Katarina (Danica Curcic) — asking for some help with her employers from her neighbour, Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen).

    Cecilie is a successful non-profit manager and mother of two married to a high-profile lawyer. She employs Angel (Excel Busano), a Filipina au pair. Cecilie tells Ruby (Donna Levkovski) she cannot get involved.

    The next day, Ruby vanishes without a trace.

    The series is propelled by Cecilie’s guilt in refusing to help Ruby. She is shocked at her neighbours’ apparent lack of concern for Ruby’s disappearance.

    Cecilie begins to sleuth for clues regarding Ruby’s disappearance and she eventually decides to assist Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), a racialized policewoman assigned to find the missing au pair. Cecilie discovers a pregnancy kit by a trash bin where she had last seen Ruby. And she soon suspects Ruby’s employer, Rasmus, of raping her.

    While the series lacks true suspense due to its predictable story arc peppered with clues about Ruby’s disappearance, it is amply compensated by a sharp critique on the moral decay of modern society, systemic racism and the complicity of women in upholding white masculine privilege.

    Warped racist view of the world

    Secrets We Keep lays bare the warped world view of rich, white privilege, racism and the sexual fetishism of Asian women.

    At a dinner party one night, Rasmus and Katarina do not seem concerned about their missing au pair. Katarina labels Filipina au pairs as whores working in brothels. When discussing Ruby, Katarina says, “she probably ran off to do porn.”

    In one uncomfortable scene, Rasmus taunts Cecilia’s husband, Mike (Simon Sears), about his sexual preferences. Mike responds by saying: “I don’t have ‘yellow fever.’” Cecilia sits silently beside Mike.

    Katarina also calls Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), the policewoman, “the little brown one.”

    At a formal dinner, Rasmus tells Cecilia: “We stick together. We are from the same world, and we are loyal to each other.”

    High rates of violence against women

    The reduction of Ruby into a sexual object in the show reflects the high rates of sexual violence against Filipina au pairs in Scandinavia.

    It led the Philippines to ban the participation of Scandinavian countries in its “informal labour” arrangement in 1998. Though the ban was lifted in 2010, Au Pair Network, an advocacy group, reveals that the program is still riddled with abuse.

    The Nordic Paradox is a term used to describe how Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, rank the highest in the Gender Equality Index yet suffer from very high rates of violence against women and intimate partner violence in Europe.

    At a recent gender studies conference in Stockholm, Ardis Ingvars, a sociologist at the University of Iceland who worked as an au pair for a year in the United States just after she turned 18, recalls her anxiety and apprehension as she moved to Boston.

    She said:

    “Au pairs hope to be lucky with the family turning out OK. What is difficult to take is the attitude of ‘ownership’ that the children and families display over the au pairs as an unquestioned entitlement.”

    Ingvars said asymmetrical power relations embedded within the au pair system reinforce racial and class hierarchies.

    This is reflected in Secrets We Keep. Midway during Aicha’s investigation, as she hits roadblock after roadblock, she cries out in frustration: “She’s a fucking nobody in their world.”

    Aicha Petersen (Sara Fanta Traore) is the police investigator charged with finding Ruby in ‘Secrets We Keep’.
    Netflix

    Feminized labour exploitation

    Economic globalization, neoliberal policies and an increased dependence on the remittance economy fuses with the care gap in the Global North to fuel the feminized care migration from the Global South, many of them Filipino women.

    Au pairs are placed with host families who provide free board and meals in return for up to 30 hours a week of housework and child care as they learn the host language and customs. The au pairs are paid “pocket money” of Danish Kroner 5,000 per month (approx $1,000 Canadian) out of which they also pay local taxes.

    One scene shows one of Cecilie’s work meetings. A junior staff member expresses surprise that Cecilie has an au pair, labelling it a relic of colonial era racial hierarchies.

    Cecilie defends herself, and says the system survives because of the failure of men to keep up their domestic bargain and thus the need for women like her “to outsource care.”

    She argues the Filipina au pairs “are dependable” and she is “a much better mother” because of Angel. But Cecilie doesn’t acknowledge her privilege — that to be with her children and have a career is predicated on the exploitative extraction of care from Global South women.

    The female au pairs in Denmark must be between 18-29 years of age, childless, never married and at the end of two years, return home. Almost 50 to 75 per cent of au pairs in Denmark are Filipino women

    Cecilie’s shock at finding out that Angel has a son whom she left behind in the Philippines is part of her denial. In the end, Cecilie is unable to confront her own complicity and decides to release Angel from their au pair arrangement.

    “You know nothing about my world…You are very lucky,” cries Angel in anguish as Cecilie hands her the return ticket and an extra three months’ pay to demonstrate her magnanimity.

    Secrets We Keep reveals the brutal reality for Global South au pairs as well as upper-class white women and their entitlements. It indicates that even though these white wealthy women may see mistreatment, they maintain their silence and participate in wilful gendered violence to hold onto that privilege, while maintaining a façade of compassion towards the disposable racial migrant other.

    Reena Kukreja receives funding from SSHRC.

    – ref. Netflix drama ‘Secrets We Keep’ exposes the dangers of domestic migrant work – https://theconversation.com/netflix-drama-secrets-we-keep-exposes-the-dangers-of-domestic-migrant-work-258556

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Netflix drama ‘Secrets We Keep’ exposes the dangers of domestic migrant work

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Reena Kukreja, Associate Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario

    In Secrets We Keep, the hidden world of domestic work and abuse is exposed. Here Excel Busano who plays Angel, Cecilia’s au pair and Ruby’s best friend in Denmark speaks with her community on the phone. Tine Harden/Netflix

    Secrets We Keep (Reservatet), a Danish suspense series on Netflix created by Ingeborg Topsøe, delves into the disappearance of a Filipina au pair from an elite suburb of Copenhagen — and delivers a sharp social commentary on racial and class entitlements.

    Moving fluidly between English, Danish and Tagalog, the six-part drama is a nuanced indictment of the lack of moral accountability among the rich. On display are the prejudices and complicity of white women in enabling a culture of toxic masculinity that treats Filipina migrant women as sexualized and disposable commodities.

    The story starts with a tearful Ruby Tan — a Filipina au pair who works for the affluent Rasmus (Lars Ranthe) and Katarina (Danica Curcic) — asking for some help with her employers from her neighbour, Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen).

    Cecilie is a successful non-profit manager and mother of two married to a high-profile lawyer. She employs Angel (Excel Busano), a Filipina au pair. Cecilie tells Ruby (Donna Levkovski) she cannot get involved.

    The next day, Ruby vanishes without a trace.

    The series is propelled by Cecilie’s guilt in refusing to help Ruby. She is shocked at her neighbours’ apparent lack of concern for Ruby’s disappearance.

    Cecilie begins to sleuth for clues regarding Ruby’s disappearance and she eventually decides to assist Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), a racialized policewoman assigned to find the missing au pair. Cecilie discovers a pregnancy kit by a trash bin where she had last seen Ruby. And she soon suspects Ruby’s employer, Rasmus, of raping her.

    While the series lacks true suspense due to its predictable story arc peppered with clues about Ruby’s disappearance, it is amply compensated by a sharp critique on the moral decay of modern society, systemic racism and the complicity of women in upholding white masculine privilege.

    Warped racist view of the world

    Secrets We Keep lays bare the warped world view of rich, white privilege, racism and the sexual fetishism of Asian women.

    At a dinner party one night, Rasmus and Katarina do not seem concerned about their missing au pair. Katarina labels Filipina au pairs as whores working in brothels. When discussing Ruby, Katarina says, “she probably ran off to do porn.”

    In one uncomfortable scene, Rasmus taunts Cecilia’s husband, Mike (Simon Sears), about his sexual preferences. Mike responds by saying: “I don’t have ‘yellow fever.’” Cecilia sits silently beside Mike.

    Katarina also calls Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), the policewoman, “the little brown one.”

    At a formal dinner, Rasmus tells Cecilia: “We stick together. We are from the same world, and we are loyal to each other.”

    High rates of violence against women

    The reduction of Ruby into a sexual object in the show reflects the high rates of sexual violence against Filipina au pairs in Scandinavia.

    It led the Philippines to ban the participation of Scandinavian countries in its “informal labour” arrangement in 1998. Though the ban was lifted in 2010, Au Pair Network, an advocacy group, reveals that the program is still riddled with abuse.

    The Nordic Paradox is a term used to describe how Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, rank the highest in the Gender Equality Index yet suffer from very high rates of violence against women and intimate partner violence in Europe.

    At a recent gender studies conference in Stockholm, Ardis Ingvars, a sociologist at the University of Iceland who worked as an au pair for a year in the United States just after she turned 18, recalls her anxiety and apprehension as she moved to Boston.

    She said:

    “Au pairs hope to be lucky with the family turning out OK. What is difficult to take is the attitude of ‘ownership’ that the children and families display over the au pairs as an unquestioned entitlement.”

    Ingvars said asymmetrical power relations embedded within the au pair system reinforce racial and class hierarchies.

    This is reflected in Secrets We Keep. Midway during Aicha’s investigation, as she hits roadblock after roadblock, she cries out in frustration: “She’s a fucking nobody in their world.”

    Aicha Petersen (Sara Fanta Traore) is the police investigator charged with finding Ruby in ‘Secrets We Keep’.
    Netflix

    Feminized labour exploitation

    Economic globalization, neoliberal policies and an increased dependence on the remittance economy fuses with the care gap in the Global North to fuel the feminized care migration from the Global South, many of them Filipino women.

    Au pairs are placed with host families who provide free board and meals in return for up to 30 hours a week of housework and child care as they learn the host language and customs. The au pairs are paid “pocket money” of Danish Kroner 5,000 per month (approx $1,000 Canadian) out of which they also pay local taxes.

    One scene shows one of Cecilie’s work meetings. A junior staff member expresses surprise that Cecilie has an au pair, labelling it a relic of colonial era racial hierarchies.

    Cecilie defends herself, and says the system survives because of the failure of men to keep up their domestic bargain and thus the need for women like her “to outsource care.”

    She argues the Filipina au pairs “are dependable” and she is “a much better mother” because of Angel. But Cecilie doesn’t acknowledge her privilege — that to be with her children and have a career is predicated on the exploitative extraction of care from Global South women.

    The female au pairs in Denmark must be between 18-29 years of age, childless, never married and at the end of two years, return home. Almost 50 to 75 per cent of au pairs in Denmark are Filipino women

    Cecilie’s shock at finding out that Angel has a son whom she left behind in the Philippines is part of her denial. In the end, Cecilie is unable to confront her own complicity and decides to release Angel from their au pair arrangement.

    “You know nothing about my world…You are very lucky,” cries Angel in anguish as Cecilie hands her the return ticket and an extra three months’ pay to demonstrate her magnanimity.

    Secrets We Keep reveals the brutal reality for Global South au pairs as well as upper-class white women and their entitlements. It indicates that even though these white wealthy women may see mistreatment, they maintain their silence and participate in wilful gendered violence to hold onto that privilege, while maintaining a façade of compassion towards the disposable racial migrant other.

    Reena Kukreja receives funding from SSHRC.

    – ref. Netflix drama ‘Secrets We Keep’ exposes the dangers of domestic migrant work – https://theconversation.com/netflix-drama-secrets-we-keep-exposes-the-dangers-of-domestic-migrant-work-258556

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Netflix drama ‘Secrets We Keep’ exposes the dangers of domestic migrant work

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Reena Kukreja, Associate Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario

    In Secrets We Keep, the hidden world of domestic work and abuse is exposed. Here Excel Busano who plays Angel, Cecilia’s au pair and Ruby’s best friend in Denmark speaks with her community on the phone. Tine Harden/Netflix

    Secrets We Keep (Reservatet), a Danish suspense series on Netflix created by Ingeborg Topsøe, delves into the disappearance of a Filipina au pair from an elite suburb of Copenhagen — and delivers a sharp social commentary on racial and class entitlements.

    Moving fluidly between English, Danish and Tagalog, the six-part drama is a nuanced indictment of the lack of moral accountability among the rich. On display are the prejudices and complicity of white women in enabling a culture of toxic masculinity that treats Filipina migrant women as sexualized and disposable commodities.

    The story starts with a tearful Ruby Tan — a Filipina au pair who works for the affluent Rasmus (Lars Ranthe) and Katarina (Danica Curcic) — asking for some help with her employers from her neighbour, Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen).

    Cecilie is a successful non-profit manager and mother of two married to a high-profile lawyer. She employs Angel (Excel Busano), a Filipina au pair. Cecilie tells Ruby (Donna Levkovski) she cannot get involved.

    The next day, Ruby vanishes without a trace.

    The series is propelled by Cecilie’s guilt in refusing to help Ruby. She is shocked at her neighbours’ apparent lack of concern for Ruby’s disappearance.

    Cecilie begins to sleuth for clues regarding Ruby’s disappearance and she eventually decides to assist Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), a racialized policewoman assigned to find the missing au pair. Cecilie discovers a pregnancy kit by a trash bin where she had last seen Ruby. And she soon suspects Ruby’s employer, Rasmus, of raping her.

    While the series lacks true suspense due to its predictable story arc peppered with clues about Ruby’s disappearance, it is amply compensated by a sharp critique on the moral decay of modern society, systemic racism and the complicity of women in upholding white masculine privilege.

    Warped racist view of the world

    Secrets We Keep lays bare the warped world view of rich, white privilege, racism and the sexual fetishism of Asian women.

    At a dinner party one night, Rasmus and Katarina do not seem concerned about their missing au pair. Katarina labels Filipina au pairs as whores working in brothels. When discussing Ruby, Katarina says, “she probably ran off to do porn.”

    In one uncomfortable scene, Rasmus taunts Cecilia’s husband, Mike (Simon Sears), about his sexual preferences. Mike responds by saying: “I don’t have ‘yellow fever.’” Cecilia sits silently beside Mike.

    Katarina also calls Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), the policewoman, “the little brown one.”

    At a formal dinner, Rasmus tells Cecilia: “We stick together. We are from the same world, and we are loyal to each other.”

    High rates of violence against women

    The reduction of Ruby into a sexual object in the show reflects the high rates of sexual violence against Filipina au pairs in Scandinavia.

    It led the Philippines to ban the participation of Scandinavian countries in its “informal labour” arrangement in 1998. Though the ban was lifted in 2010, Au Pair Network, an advocacy group, reveals that the program is still riddled with abuse.

    The Nordic Paradox is a term used to describe how Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, rank the highest in the Gender Equality Index yet suffer from very high rates of violence against women and intimate partner violence in Europe.

    At a recent gender studies conference in Stockholm, Ardis Ingvars, a sociologist at the University of Iceland who worked as an au pair for a year in the United States just after she turned 18, recalls her anxiety and apprehension as she moved to Boston.

    She said:

    “Au pairs hope to be lucky with the family turning out OK. What is difficult to take is the attitude of ‘ownership’ that the children and families display over the au pairs as an unquestioned entitlement.”

    Ingvars said asymmetrical power relations embedded within the au pair system reinforce racial and class hierarchies.

    This is reflected in Secrets We Keep. Midway during Aicha’s investigation, as she hits roadblock after roadblock, she cries out in frustration: “She’s a fucking nobody in their world.”

    Aicha Petersen (Sara Fanta Traore) is the police investigator charged with finding Ruby in ‘Secrets We Keep’.
    Netflix

    Feminized labour exploitation

    Economic globalization, neoliberal policies and an increased dependence on the remittance economy fuses with the care gap in the Global North to fuel the feminized care migration from the Global South, many of them Filipino women.

    Au pairs are placed with host families who provide free board and meals in return for up to 30 hours a week of housework and child care as they learn the host language and customs. The au pairs are paid “pocket money” of Danish Kroner 5,000 per month (approx $1,000 Canadian) out of which they also pay local taxes.

    One scene shows one of Cecilie’s work meetings. A junior staff member expresses surprise that Cecilie has an au pair, labelling it a relic of colonial era racial hierarchies.

    Cecilie defends herself, and says the system survives because of the failure of men to keep up their domestic bargain and thus the need for women like her “to outsource care.”

    She argues the Filipina au pairs “are dependable” and she is “a much better mother” because of Angel. But Cecilie doesn’t acknowledge her privilege — that to be with her children and have a career is predicated on the exploitative extraction of care from Global South women.

    The female au pairs in Denmark must be between 18-29 years of age, childless, never married and at the end of two years, return home. Almost 50 to 75 per cent of au pairs in Denmark are Filipino women

    Cecilie’s shock at finding out that Angel has a son whom she left behind in the Philippines is part of her denial. In the end, Cecilie is unable to confront her own complicity and decides to release Angel from their au pair arrangement.

    “You know nothing about my world…You are very lucky,” cries Angel in anguish as Cecilie hands her the return ticket and an extra three months’ pay to demonstrate her magnanimity.

    Secrets We Keep reveals the brutal reality for Global South au pairs as well as upper-class white women and their entitlements. It indicates that even though these white wealthy women may see mistreatment, they maintain their silence and participate in wilful gendered violence to hold onto that privilege, while maintaining a façade of compassion towards the disposable racial migrant other.

    Reena Kukreja receives funding from SSHRC.

    – ref. Netflix drama ‘Secrets We Keep’ exposes the dangers of domestic migrant work – https://theconversation.com/netflix-drama-secrets-we-keep-exposes-the-dangers-of-domestic-migrant-work-258556

    MIL OSI Analysis –