Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Guys, the Border Already Is Secure

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
border-fence

U.S. immigration reform has hinged on first “securing the border,” which has that sort of common sense appeal of not fixing water damage after a pipe bursts until you repair the leaky pipe. Politicians from former presidential contenders to D.C. legislators to local sheriffs all insist that the border needs to be fixed before we can talk about legalizing existing illegal immigrants or making other changes to immigration policy. This week, Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the “gang of eight” working on drafting an immigration bill, repeated the mantra that there will be no bill ... Read More

More like this: Politics
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The Last Word on Wartime Contractors?

November 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

At the end of September, after three years of hearings, reports and deliberations, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan turned off its lights for the last time. It left behind a report that is arguably the most comprehensive examination yet of the fraud, waste, and abuse rife among contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Contractors are a reality,” says the commission’s co-chair, former nine-term Republican congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut. “You can’t go to war without contractors. The irony is that we went to war unprepared to use ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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The Physics of Terror

September 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The Physics of Terror

Last summer, physicist Aaron Clauset was telling a group of undergraduates who were touring the Santa Fe Institute about the unexpected mathematical symmetries he had found while studying global terrorist attacks over the past four decades. Their professor made a comment that brought Clauset up short. "He was surprised that I could think about such a morbid topic in such a dry, scientific way," Clauset recalls. "And I hadn't even thought about that. It was just ... I think in some ways, in order to do this, you have to separate yourself from the emotional aspects of it." If the professor's ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, January-February 2011, Magazine Feature Story, Science
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WikiLeaks and the Future of Whistle-blowing

May 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
WikiLeaks and the Future of Whistle-blowing

Mark Stephens, the British attorney for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, is traveling to the United States this week for a debate hosted by Index on Censorship and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on the impact of the whistle-blowing site for journalism, national security and government secrecy. The event, set for Wednesday night in New York, is open to the public. (The Idea Lobby’s Emily Badger is also the U.S. editor for Index.) The panel, chaired by Index’s chief executive, John Kampfner, will also include investigative journalist and security services expert ... Read More

More like this: Media, The Idea Lobby
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Can Biosecurity Go Global?

April 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A tall, modest academic with graying temples, Ren Salerno was happily toiling away in obscurity at a small biological threat research program at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., "studying issues nobody really cared about," he recalls. Then the attacks on Sept. 11 burst his academic bubble. As one of the few experts on the security of biological agents, Salerno was called to Washington, where, as soon as he arrived, he met with Deputy Secretary of Agriculture James Moseley, a man with a lot to worry about. Some of the greatest bioterror threats are zoonotic pathogens — ... Read More

More like this: May-June 2011, News and Options, Politics, Science
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A Penny-a-Gallon Gas Tax?

February 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

They call it the “transportation energy security fee,” and they say it would help wean California off its $150 million-per-day gasoline addiction. The California Secure Transportation Energy Partnership (CalSTEP), a bipartisan group of industry, automotive, business, academic and nonprofit professionals, wants the state to levy a gradual tax on gasoline of an additional penny per gallon per month, increasing to $1.20 per gallon in 10 years. Every year, the group says, the extra “fee" — not "tax" — would generate an additional $1 billion in revenues for roads, buses, trains and ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Environment
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The Politics of a European Pat-Down

January 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The level of panic this winter over the snow — of all things — that snarled European and American travel plans obscured another story about invasive pat-downs at European airports. Briefly, it goes like this: Travelers in Europe didn't have to suffer them. That should seem strange. Washington has used visa-free travel agreements to foist other security restrictions on its European allies, from electronic passports to body scanners. But so far there have been almost no American-style complaints in Europe about "enhanced pat-downs," even at major European hubs like Schiphol, Frankfurt ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, European Dispatch
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Debunking Theories of a Terrorist Power Grab

December 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

You know all those doom-and-gloomers who get up before Congress and testify about how terrorists are going to attack America's electric grid, sending blackouts toppling across the country like dominoes? Well, here's what Seth Blumsack, a power-system expert at Pennsylvania State University, has to say about the terrifying prospect: "That's a bunch of hooey." Blumsack and his colleague Paul Hines at the University of Vermont have just published a report in the journal Chaos — and we can only imagine what the deadlines there are like — that refutes the drumbeat of warnings, many of which ... Read More

More like this: January-February 2011, Science, Science & Environment, The Cocktail Napkin
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Mobilizing in the Fifth Domain

October 27, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Now that large institutions like NATO and the United Nations have recognized cyberspace as the fifth domain for warfare (“after land, sea, air, and outer space”), and the Pentagon has brought its Cyber Command up to speed, the Obama administration has drawn up rules of engagement for America’s laptop legionnaires. In case of a major assault on the country’s computer networks, it seems, the Pentagon can operate on American soil. This is a big deal. As a rule, the military deploys on enemy soil. The president can make exceptions for natural disasters, and now the White House has set ... Read More

More like this: European Dispatch, Politics
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Plucking Learning From the WikiDeluge

October 21, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The Pentagon has been bracing all week for the next big release of WikiLeaks secrets, a haul expected to contain as many as 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq conflict that would dwarf this summer's Afghan "war logs." The Pentagon has a 120-person damage-control team at the ready, and it has already begun begging news outlets not to publish the material. (WikiLeaks, which runs better interference than the Pentagon itself, maintains on its Wikileaks Twitter feed that it has no idea why everyone thinks these files are about Iraq.) Whenever they are released — and whatever is ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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