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On Valentine’s Day in 2019, there was a suicide bombing in India-administered Kashmir by a Pakistan-based militant, known as the Pulwama attack. Following the incident, India declared an attempt to suspend its share of river waters flowing into Pakistan. In response, Pakistan has accused India of deteriorating its agricultural economy and violating the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), a water-sharing agreement signed by both countries in 1960. This event is part of the lingering water conflict between India and Pakistan since the partition in 1947, which has raised concerns from scholars about whether it would potentially escalate into an armed conflict or even a water war between the two countries by 2025.

Whilst it will probably not escalate into a full-scale armed conflict by 2025, this dispute between India and Pakistan over the Indus River is unlikely to be solved soon due to the deep mistrust between the two countries.

After the terrorist attack on Indian troops in Kashmir two weeks ago that killed 40 Indian soldiers, but before Tuesday’s retaliatory air strikes across the border into Pakistan by the Indian air force, the Indian government did something unprecedented. It threatened to cut off Pakistan’s water. Or at least, it sounded like that.

On February 21, Nitin Gadkari, India’s transport minister, Tweeted: “Our Govt. has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan. We will divert water from Eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.” Dangerous talk: that way lies nuclear war.

The Kashmir region has remained a flashpoint between India and Pakistan for more than six decades. To understand the dimensions of this conflict, one has to go back to 1947. After the division of the sub-continent, two states emerged onto the world's stage. Both Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, knew both nations lacked strong institutions and resources to sustain the test of time. Despite all the challenges, Jinnah came up with an impressive inaugural speech to talk about inclusive and impartial government. Nehru's "Tryst with Destiny" speech, meanwhile, highlighted the independent struggles and set the tone for India's role in the future. After the partition, Kashmir – a princely state with substantial natural resources and beauty in the north-western corner of the subcontinent, became an issue at hand and led to four wars between India and Pakistan. India's and Pakistan's interests in Kashmir are seemingly manifold.

The hallmark of any interest-based conflict is that it has layers of priorities with a primary underlying locus. In Kashmir's case, the underlying interest of the neighboring countries is water. Therefore, the dispute over Kashmir is interlinked mainly with water security in both countries. As we approach the 75th anniversary of the Indian-Pakistan partition in 2022, what is the status of the India-Pakistan conflict? This article seeks to highlight the unforeseen challenges that might not be visible now, but, if they become visible, will lead to irreversible damages, violent conflicts, and wars. We need to prepare now.

Even a nuclear conflict between new nuclear states would decimate crop production and result in widespread starvation

More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, according to a global study led by Rutgers climate scientists that estimates post-conflict crop production.

Global climate change is the final component of the environmental commons and the one with the greatest potential geopolitical impact. Scientists and policy makers alike have projected catastrophic consequences for [hu]mankind and the planet if the world average temperature rises by more than two degrees over the next century. Plant and animal species could grow extinct at a rapid pace, large-scale ecosystems could collapse, human migration could increase to untenable levels, and global economic development could be categorically reversed. Changes in geography, forced migration, and global economic contraction layered on top of the perennial regional security challenges could create a geopolitical reality of unmanageable complexity and conflict, especially in the densely populated and politically unstable areas of Asia such as the Northeast and South. Furthermore, any legitimate action inhibiting global climate change will require unprecedented levels of self-sacrifice and international cooperation. The United States does consider climate change a serious concern, but its lack of both long-term strategy and political commitment, evidenced in its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the repeated defeat of climate-change legislation in Congress, deters other countries from participating in a global agreement. The United States is the second-largest global emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, with 20% of the world’s share. The United States is the number one per capita emitter of carbon dioxide and the global leader in per capita energy demand. Therefore, US leadership is essential in not only getting other countries to cooperate, but also in actually inhibiting climate change. Others around the world, including the European Union and Brazil, have attempted their own domestic reforms on carbon emissions and energy use, and committed themselves to pursuing renewable energy. Even China has made reducing emissions a goal, a fact it refuses to let the United States ignore. But none of those nations currently has the ability to lead a global initiative. President Obama committed the United States to energy and carbon reform at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, but the increasingly polarized domestic political environment and the truculent American economic recovery are unlikely to inspire progress on costly energy issues. China is also critically important to any discussion of the management of climate change as it produces 21% of the world’s total carbon emissions, a percentage that will only increase as China develops the western regions of its territory and as its citizens experience a growth in their standard of living. China, however, has refused to take on a leadership role in climate change, as it has also done in the maritime, space, and cyberspace domains. China uses its designation as a developing country to shield itself from the demands of global stewardship. China’s tough stance at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit underscores the potential dangers of an American decline: no other country has the capacity and the desire to accept global stewardship over the environmental commons. Only a vigorous United States could lead on climate change, given Russia’s dependence on carbon-based energies for economic growth, India’s relatively low emissions rate, and China’s current reluctance to assume global responsibility. The protection and good faith management of the global commons—sea, space, cyberspace, nuclear proliferation, water security, the Arctic, and the environment itself—are imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. But in almost every case, the potential absence of constructive and influential US leadership would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons.

It’s difficult to imagine China defending a rule-based, open international order if it were a unipolar power, much less making an effort to uphold a minimum level of human rights in the world. Regardless of your opinion on U.S. global leadership over the last two decades, however, there is good reason to fear its relative decline compared with China and other emerging nations. To begin with, hegemonic transition periods have historically been the most destabilizing eras in history. This is not only because of the malign intentions of the rising and established power(s). Even if all the parties have benign, peaceful intentions, the rise of new global powers necessitates revisions to the “rules of the road.” This is nearly impossible to do in any organized fashion given the anarchic nature of the international system, where there is no central authority that can govern interactions between states. We are already starting to see the potential dangers of hegemonic transition periods in the Asia-Pacific (and arguably the Middle East). As China grows more economically and militarily powerful, it has unsurprisingly sought to expand its influence in East Asia. This necessarily has to come at the expense of other powers, which so far has primarily meant the U.S., Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Naturally, these powers have sought to resist Chinese encroachments on their territory and influence, and the situation grows more tense with each passing day. Should China eventually emerge as a global power, or should nations in other regions enjoy a similar rise as Kenny suggests, this situation will play itself out elsewhere in the years and decades ahead. All of this highlights some of the advantages of a unipolar system. Namely, although the U.S. has asserted military force quite frequently in the post-Cold War era, it has only fought weak powers and thus its wars have been fairly limited in terms of the number of casualties involved. At the same time, America’s preponderance of power has prevented a great power war, and even restrained major regional powers from coming to blows. For instance, the past 25 years haven’t seen any conflicts on par with the Israeli-Arab or Iran-Iraq wars of the Cold War. As the unipolar era comes to a close, the possibility of great power conflict and especially major regional wars rises dramatically. The world will also have to contend with conventionally inferior powers like Japan acquiring nuclear weapons to protect their interests against their newly empowered rivals. But even if the transitions caused by China’s and potentially other nations’ rises are managed successfully, there are still likely to be significant negative effects on International Relations. In today’s “globalized” world, it is commonly asserted that many of the defining challenges of our era can only be solved through multilateral cooperation. Examples of this include[s] climate change, health pandemics, organized crime and terrorism, global financial crises, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, among many others. A unipolar system, for all its limitations, is uniquely suited for organizing effective global action on these transnational issues. This is because there is a clear global leader who can take the initiative and, to some degree, compel others to fall in line. In addition, the unipole’s preponderance of power lessens the intensity of competition among the global players involved. Thus, while there are no shortages of complaints about the limitations of global governance today, there is no question that global governance has been many times more effective in the last 25 years than it was during the Cold War. The rise of China and potentially other powers will create a new bipolar or multipolar order. This, in turn, will make solving these transnational issues much more difficult. Despite the optimistic rhetoric that emanates from official U.S.-China meetings, the reality is that Sino-American competition is likely to overshadow an increasing number of global issues in the years ahead. If other countries like India, Turkey, and Brazil also become significant global powers, this will only further dampen the prospects for effective global governance.

The U.S. military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat,” in the judgment of a congressional commission whose new report finds that collaboration between Russia, China, and other autocratic states is increasing the chance of a multi-front conflict—and that the U.S. would have trouble sustaining such a fight.

For more than a year, the former lawmakers, military leaders, and policy experts on the Commission on the National Defense Strategy have studied how well the U.S. military is executing the 2022 national defense strategy. The group released their report on Monday and will present its findings to the Senate Armed Services committee on Tuesday.

What would totalitarian governments of the past have looked like if they were never defeated? The Nazis operated with 20th Century technology and it still took a world war to stop them. How much more powerful – and permanent – could the Nazis have been if they had beat the US to the atomic bomb? Controlling the most advanced technology of the time could have solidified Nazi power and changed the course of history. When we think of existential risks, events like nuclear war or asteroid impacts often come to mind. Yet there’s one future threat that is less well known – and while it doesn’t involve the extinction of our species, it could be just as bad. It’s called the “world in chains” scenario, where, like the preceding thought experiment, a global totalitarian government uses a novel technology to lock a majority of the world into perpetual suffering. If it sounds grim, you’d be right. But is it likely? Researchers and philosophers are beginning to ponder how it might come about – and, more importantly, what we can do to avoid it. Existential risks (x-risks) are disastrous because they lock humanity into a single fate, like the permanent collapse of civilisation or the extinction of our species. These catastrophes can have natural causes, like an asteroid impact or a supervolcano, or be human-made from sources like nuclear war or climate change. Allowing one to happen would be “an abject end to the human story" and would let down the hundreds of generations that came before us, says Haydn Belfield, academic project manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. Toby Ord, a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University, believes that the odds of an existential catastrophe happening this century from natural causes are less than one in 2,000, because humans have survived for 2,000 centuries without one. However, when he adds the probability of human-made disasters, Ord believes the chances increase to a startling one in six. He refers to this century as “the precipice” because the risk of losing our future has never been so high. Researchers at the Center on Long-Term Risk, a non-profit research institute in London, have expanded upon x-risks with the even-more-chilling prospect of suffering risks. These “s-risks” are defined as “suffering on an astronomical scale, vastly exceeding all suffering that has existed on Earth so far.” In these scenarios, life continues for billions of people, but the quality is so low and the outlook so bleak that dying out would be preferable. In short: a future with negative value is worse than one with no value at all. This is where the “world in chains” scenario comes in. If a malevolent group or government suddenly gained world-dominating power through technology, and there was nothing to stand in its way, it could lead to an extended period of abject suffering and subjugation. A 2017 report on existential risks from the Global Priorities Project, in conjunction with FHI and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, warned that “a long future under a particularly brutal global totalitarian state could arguably be worse than complete extinction”. Singleton hypothesis Though global totalitarianism is still a niche topic of study, researchers in the field of existential risk are increasingly turning their attention to its most likely cause: artificial intelligence. In his “singleton hypothesis”, Nick Bostrom, director at Oxford’s FHI, has explained how a global government could form with AI or other powerful technologies – and why it might be impossible to overthrow. He writes that a world with “a single decision-making agency at the highest level” could occur if that agency “obtains a decisive lead through a technological breakthrough in artificial intelligence or molecular nanotechnology”. Once in charge, it would control advances in technology that prevent internal challenges, like surveillance or autonomous weapons, and, with this monopoly, remain perpetually stable. If the singleton is totalitarian, life would be bleak. Even in the countries with the strictest regimes, news leaks in and out from other countries and people can escape. A global totalitarian rule would eliminate even these small seeds of hope. To be worse than extinction, “that would mean we feel absolutely no freedom, no privacy, no hope of escaping, no agency to control our lives at all", says Tucker Davey, a writer at the Future of Life Institute in Massachusetts, which focuses on existential risk research. “In totalitarian regimes of the past, [there was] so much paranoia and psychological suffering because you just have no idea if you're going to get killed for saying the wrong thing,” he continues. “And now imagine that there's not even a question, every single thing you say isbeing reported and being analysed.”

A world dominated by totalitarian states would be more incompetent, more war-prone, less cooperative, and more inhibitive of progress than one dominated by democratic states. Our current world is not particularly competent, peaceful, cooperative, or progressive—a totalitarian-dominated world would be worse. It would increase the risk of another collapse and extinction and could shape the future toward less desirable trajectories (Beckstead, 2013). Totalitarian states are incompetent. They are bad at forecasting and dealing with disasters (Caplan, 2008).16 This can be seen most clearly in the great famines of Communist China and the USSR, in which millions died (Applebaum, 2017; Becker, 1996; Dikötter, 2010; Snyder, 2010). In comparison, functioning multiparty democracies rarely, if ever, experience famines (Sen, 2010). “Established autocracies” (or “personal”/“sultanist”) are particularly bad, as there are few checks or restraints on arbitrary rule and the whims and ideology of the single individual, even from other elites (Svolik, 2012). From the inside, the “inner circle” around Mao, Stalin, and Hitler seems incredibly chaotic, with elites strongly incentivized to conceal information and encouraged by the autocrat to squabble and feud—so they are divided (Conquest, 1992; Kershaw, 2008; Zhang & Halliday, 2006). If totalitarian states are worse at addressing social, environmental, and technological problems, then a world dominated by them would likely be worse at responding to risks of collapse and extinction. A world dominated by totalitarian states is more likely to have major wars. States with near-universal adult suffrage rarely (if ever) go to war with one another (Barnhart et al., 2020), so a world dominated by democracies has fewer wars. Miscalculation might be a particular problem for totalitarian states due to personalization and disincentives for accurate information, leading to well-known strategic disasters such as Hitler and Stalin’s blunders in World War II (Bialer, 1970; Noakes & Pridham, 2001), or at a smaller level, Saddam Hussein’s rejection of diplomacy (Atkinson, 1993). War makes collapse and extinction more likely, by raising the chance of weapons of mass destruction being used. Linked to this, totalitarian states are less cooperative than democratic states. While cooperation is possible (Ginsburg, 2020), their internal norms are characterized by paranoia and treachery, and their lack of transparency limits their ability to credibly commit to agreements. This is bad for all risks that require cooperation such as pandemics or climate change (Tomasik, 2015). Finally, continued social and scientific progress is likely to reduce risks of collapse and extinction. Social progress could reduce global inequality and other risk factors. Scientific progress could help address natural risks and climate change (Sandberg, 2018), differentially increase defensive rather than offensive power (Garfinkel & Dafoe, 2019), and solve safety challenges in AI or biotechnology (Russell, 2019). However, as we will now discuss totalitarian states would likely inhibit social progress. A central question from a longtermist perspective is: Which values should shape the future? I would argue that we should prefer it to be shaped by liberal democratic values. This is not to say that the current democracy-dominated world is perfect—far from it. The fate of billions of factory-farmed animals or hundreds of millions of people in extreme poverty makes that abundantly clear. However, democracies have two advantages. First, democracies have space for cosmopolitan values such as human rights, plurality, freedom, and equality. These are better than those that characterize life under totalitarianism: Fear, terror, subjection, and secrecy. Second, they have within themselves the mechanism to allow progress. In the last 100 (or even 50) years, the lives of women, LGBT people, religious minorities, and non-white people have dramatically improved. Our “moral circle” has expanded, and could continue to expand (Singer, 1981). The arc of the moral universe is long, but given the right conditions, it might just bend toward justice (King, 1968). A global society dominated by these values, and with the possibility of improving more, has a better longterm potential. A totalitarian-dominated world, on the other hand, would reduce the space for resistance and progress—distorting the human trajectory. We should be particularly concerned about “bottlenecks” at which values are particularly important—where there is a risk of “locking-in” some particular set of (possibly far from optimal) values. While they are currently faroff, future technologies such as artificial general intelligence, space settlement, life extension (of autocrats), or much better surveillance could enable lock-in (Caplan, 2008).17 Conditional on them avoiding new catastrophes, world orders dominated by totalitarians could be quite long-lasting (Caplan, 2008). Democracies can undermine authoritarian and totalitarian regimes through the following ways: Control, including conquest; contagion through proximity; and consent, promoting receptivity toward democratization (Whitehead, 2001). Democracies can actively undermine these regimes through war, sanctions, hosting rebellious exiles, or sponsoring internal movements. Passively, through contagion, they offer a demonstration that a better, more prosperous life is possible. For example, in the final years of the USSR, ordinary Soviet citizens were able to see that the West had a higher standard of living—more innovation, more choice, and more consumer goods. The elites were able to read books from the outside, and travel—Gorbachev’s contacts and friendships with European politicians may have made him more favorable to social democracy (Brown, 1996). Democracies can undermine the will and capacity of the coercive apparatus (Bellin, 2004). However, in a world not dominated by democracies, all these pressures would be far less. A world in which, say, totalitarian regimes emerged as dominant after World War II (for example if the USA was defeated) could be self-reinforcing and long-lasting, like the self-reinforcing relationship of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia (Orwell, 1949). Orwell’s fictional world is characterized by constant low-grade warfare to justify emergency powers and secure elites, and with shifting alliances of convenience as states bandwagon and balance, thereby preventing any resolution. A totalitarian-dominated world order could be rather robust, perhaps for decades or even centuries. A long-lasting totalitarian-dominated world would extend the period of time humanity would spend with a heightened risk of collapse or extinction, as well as increased potential for distortion of the human trajectory and the possibility that a “lock-in” event may occur. This example illustrates the possibility of a “negative recovery,” resulting in a trajectory with less or no scientific and social progress and a less favorable geopolitical situation, which would threaten the destruction of humanity’s longterm potential.

A New Zealand man with a “neo-Nazi” ideology was arrested on March 14 for allegedly planning to attack an electrical substation, according to counterterrorism personnel in that country. Substations adjust electric voltage as needed to move power across the power grid. The officials said he harbored anti-government sentiment, was anti-Semitic and anti-Indigenous, and has neo-Nazi interests. Police allege the man was trying to buy military gear and equipment to make an improvised explosive device, which could have knocked out power to a swath of the region — a reminder that cyber attacks are not the only threat to critical infrastructure. Far-right extremists in the U.S. have also discussed and planned attacks on the power grid, and specifically substations. In September 2017 a leader of Atomwaffen Division (AWD), one of the country’s most dangerous extremist groups, posted in a chat room “You would want to target things like: Substations, water filtration plants, etc.” and that he had “a map of the US power grid….West-coast only….Classified map. Had someone with special permissions get it.” And Devon Arthurs, who murdered two of his roommates and fellow AWD members in Florida in May 2017, claimed the group had planned to use a cache of explosives and weapons to attack the nation’s power grid, nuclear reactors and synagogues. Including Arthurs, at least three AWD members or associates are associated with five homicides between 2017 and 2018. And last month, the FBI arrested five members of the AWD across four different states. An adherent to The Base, a small militant neo-Nazi organization that emerged mid-2018, mentioned the vulnerability of the “electrical grid” in a Gab post. In January, seven alleged members of The Base were arrested in Maryland, Georgia and Wisconsin. In December 1999, three members of the San Joaquin California Militia conspired to destroy an electrical substation (in addition to destroying a propane storage facility and a television tower, and also killing a federal judge) with a weapon of mass destruction. The White Resistance Manual, a white supremacist handbook similar to The Anarchist Cookbook, has a sabotage section that includes electrical power generation and distribution. It notes that power systems can be “taken down” by explosives, arson, and long-range rifle fire. The manual subsequently advises that the aforementioned means can be used against substations, transformers, and suspension pylons. Attacks on power grid components can result in costly repairs or replacement, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars. These attacks can also cause electricity outages. On April 16, 2013, attackers fired over 100 rounds of high-powered rifle ammunition at 17 transformers in the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) Metcalf transmission substation in California. Although PG&E avoided a blackout, the incident incurred more than $15 million in damages that required nearly a month to repair. On August 21, 2013, Jason Woodring, a self-employed pool maintenance worker, downed a 500,000-volt power line near an active railroad track in Cabot, Arkansas. A power outage ensued. According to energy company officials, the damage was $550,000. On September 29, 2013, Woodring set fire to an extra-high voltage switching station in Scott, Arkansas. Damages exceeded $4 million. On October 6, 2013, the Jacksonville, Arkansas, area experienced a loss of power for several hours. Woodring had used a tractor to pull down one of the poles supporting a 115,000-volt transmission line. Damages were close to $50,000. Woodring ultimately confessed to the three aforementioned incidents and was sentenced to 15 years. On September 25, 2016, someone with a high-powered rifle fired a few shots at a transformer in Utah owned by Garkane Energy Cooperative, disabling a remote substation. The attack led to an eight-hour power outage for about 13,000 residents. Damage to the transformer was expected to reach $1 million and take six months to a year to fully repair, according to a Garkane spokesman. Also concerning, the spokesperson said the attack “looked more criminal than vandalism because they knew exactly where to shoot it and they shot it multiple times in the same spot,” raising concerns about a person on the loose with that detailed level of knowledge. The United States has over 55,000 substations, all of which have vulnerable components, often with insufficient physical protection. These components include circuit breakers, transmission and distribution buses, control buildings, and transformers. The highest risk components are the transformers, due to their vulnerability and potential consequences of damage or destruction. The large, rectangular “boxes” in this article’s headline picture are transformers. At substations they facilitate energy transfer over networks that operate at varying voltage levels. The immediate consequences resulting from the damage or destruction of transformers at multiple locations would be widespread power outages. The April 2013 attack at the Metcalf substation could have been devastating if the attackers had better knowledge of substation components’ criticalities and transformers’ defeat mechanisms than they displayed that spring night. Even more so if they had attacked more than one substation that night. A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission study in 2013 obtained by the Wall Street Journal assessed that taking down nine large transformers could cause a coast-to-coast blackout. However, there has not been an attack on multiple transformers in the U.S. Other consequences of attacking transformers and other components include the high cost of repair and replacement — $2 million to $7.5 million before transportation and installation costs — and replacement time. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the time between a large transformer order and delivery can take almost 2 years, depending on whether they are produced domestically or overseas. Compounding these challenges are companies’ culture and the perceived costs of protecting all these vulnerable substations and other elements of the power grid (although a remarkably insignificant amount of money — hundreds of dollars — can prevent millions of dollars in damage and destruction). A good example is PG&E after the aforementioned April 2013 attack on the Metcalf substation. NBC Bay Area discovered that security was still lacking at many substations a year and a half after the attack. The news station’s unannounced visits to nine substations in Northern and Central California revealed what experts have called vulnerabilities in PG&E’s security network. In fact, four months after the April rifle attack on the substation, intruders cut through the facility’s fence in a few locations and stole expensive equipment — ironically while the substation was undergoing security upgrades because of the attack. Furthermore, a PG&E memo obtained by NBC revealed that resources to make significant improvements for security “remained unchanged from before the attack on Metcalf” and “these improvements continue to be slow, piecemeal and uncertain.” The challenges associated with mitigating vulnerabilities against the electric grid (never mind that many critical infrastructure entities have never accomplished an enterprise security risk assessment), combined with terrorists’ stated desire to target the grid, require cost-effective security upgrades (after risk assessments) and increased vigilance. Things to watch: Indications of communications — social media or encrypted — among members of domestic terrorist groups discussing or planning attacks on the electric grid and other critical infrastructure. (Unfortunately, “lone wolves” usually give off far fewer “signatures,” or indicators they are planning attacks.) Suspicious behavior (probing, surveillance, etc.) around substations and other electric grid components, especially multiple facilities (e.g., multiple substations in the same geographic area). The aforementioned communications and suspicious behavior leading up to or during major events such as the presidential conventions this summer, or during emergencies such as the current coronavirus pandemic. Far-right extremists possibly seek to exploit the pandemic. In mid-February, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleged that white supremacists discussed weaponizing coronavirus. A worst-case scenario would be an attack on multiple substations (especially transformers) in the same area during a pandemic (especially in a pandemic “hot zone”) or natural disaster, while that area is experiencing extreme temperatures during the summer or winter.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, exposed thousands of people to potentially harmful debris and environmental contaminants. Studies have shown that survivors and others who witnessed the attack suffered psychological trauma, in particular, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The collapse of the two WTC towers released a highly alkaline mix of pulverized steel, glass, cement, and other debris into the immediate environment (Fig 1). The fires started by the crashes of the two airplanes into the twin towers and the subsequent collapse of the buildings at Ground Zero burned for approximately 3 months. Toxic smoke and fumes were released into the atmosphere, creating a cloud of dust, smoke, and debris. Workers and residents continued to be exposed to pollutants during rescue, recovery, cleanup, and restoration. Shortly after the attacks on 9/11, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) proposed an environmental health registry of persons exposed to the WTC disaster. In July 2002, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia, began collaboration with DOHMH to create the World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR). WTCHR, the largest environmental health registry created in the United States and now an ongoing collaboration with CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, is designed to expand knowledge about the long-term health effects of the 9/11 disaster and serve as a valuable public health resource for future research.

We hear repeatedly from business gurus, economic experts and other industry advisers that to succeed in an increasingly unpredictable, volatile, global market, we need to boost our resilience. We need to be flexible and prepared for shock. But whilst governments and national bodies can build some defences for when the unexpected occurs, at a local level, it can be harder to overcome. When such unpredictable, damaging and shocking acts like terrorism occur, the consequences can extend beyond the tragic loss of life and damage to a community. It, understandably, takes time for people to recover emotionally, and areas impacted to recover visibly. However, there can also be far-reaching consequences when it comes to the recovery of the local economy — and not just for those businesses that are directly impacted by such events happening on their doorsteps. We can all agree that it's entirely human, and unquestioningly understandable that nobody in their right mind would choose to place themselves within striking distance of a dangerous situation — figuratively or literally. When such events occur, as well as those living and working in an area suffering as a result, the disruption is felt further as businesses and investors seek to distance themselves from the danger. What are the wider impacts of such deliberate distancing? My study, conducted alongside colleagues from Manchester Alliance Business School and Surrey Business School, sought to explore how exogenous shocks such as terrorist attacks can impact the business economy at a local level due to the uncertainty they leave in their wake. Most importantly, we sought to understand to what extent such shocks are felt and for how long after an event occurs. To conduct our research, we gathered data from a number of sources. First, we reviewed the M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) activity of firms located in and around the locations of a sample of terrorist attacks across the USA that were heavily covered by media over a twenty year period — between 1995 and 2015. Then, to gain an insight into the scale of local level impact, we also utilised Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) data, which holds information on regions that consist of a city and surrounding communities linked by social and economic factors. Finally, we used physical distance to measure each firm’s geographic proximity from the attack locations for each event. To build a framework for such events, we also rated the severity of each terrorist attack by considering the number of human casualties involved. In doing so, some troubling findings were revealed… Whilst an immediate negative impact of such shocks was to be expected, our study revealed several harmful consequences for firms located near terrorism-stricken areas when it came to their long-term M&A prospects. Firstly, we saw that such firms become significantly less attractive to potential acquirers and, as a result, were less likely to receive an acquisition bid. Not only that, but the impact was also shown to last for as long as two years after the incident occurred. In a further blow, firms which had deals on the table before an attack occurred were, more often than not, far more likely to have those deals withdrawn in the weeks afterwards. The overall result was a significant hit to the local economy — a further complication on top of an already difficult situation. Whilst there was some argument to be made for investors securing lower-priced acquisitions as a result of such events, or for a “bargain” becoming a more desirable option to potential investors, our findings didn’t support this perspective. Instead, we witnessed that acts of terrorism prompted acquiring firms to show their preference for cross-MSA targets, or targets located further away from where the acquirers were located. This supports the growing idea that target firms located in areas subject to a terrorist attack become less attractive as a result. And for those few firms which did manage to secure deals? Our research revealed they did indeed receive a lower acquisition premium, leaving them with less bargaining power and less benefit when acquisitions did occur. Our study saw how this also translated into lower target firm stock returns and lower overall acquisition synergies. As well as the significant hit to local economies in regard to their value and profitability, a combined impact of business struggles and the root cause of such difficulties also often resulted in decreased productivity, demotivated or uncommitted workers and a loss of human capital. Bringing the problem full-circle, the loss of talent can potentially stoke the flames of terrorism-induced uncertainty, as labour productivity in firms located in terrorism-stricken areas decreases, further increasing the real option value to delay or reduce the value of M&A investments. With such worrying findings, it’s important to remember there are lessons to be learned — not only by heads of industry when it comes to deciding how to staff, market, and protect their organisations, but beyond that to local and national governments and policymakers. Apart from the impact of terrorism on target firm’s labor productivity, our results also suggest that personal uncertainty and fear affect the acquirer-CEO’s bid decisions. They also uncover a negative link between terrorism intensity and acquisition premium offered, which becomes more pronounced when the acquirer-CEO is more risk averse or when target firms are more human capital dependent. For policymakers to combat this, greater consideration and expenditures on public security and local-level investment should also be considered to give companies a firmer grounding to bounce back.

In his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden outlined democracy’s fierce battle against authoritarian aggression, and promised that “freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” U.S. technology innovation plays a key role in America’s effort to advance freedom and promote democratic values. This stands in stark contrast to the regressive, closed-off, and oppressive worldview of techno-autocracies of China and Russia.

As Russia plows forward in its invasion of Ukraine, the stakes cannot be understated, nor can the need for U.S. lawmakers to get it right be more urgent. Pursuing laws that would undermine American innovation and offer a leg up to techno-autocracies would be a terrible mistake. Now more than ever, it’s vital for leaders to strengthen our domestic tech industry and sharpen America’s technological edge on the global stage.

Space technologies have led to a number of inventions that benefit the environment and save energy. Satellite-based systems are reducing vehicles’ carbon dioxide emissions, remote-sensing technology is making wind turbines more efficient, and information from weather satellites is helping solar cells to produce more energy.

These are just some examples of how spin-offs from space technology and satellite services can make a difference. Over the years, ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme and its Business Incubation Centres have fostered and supported many innovative technologies and business ideas that contribute to new services and products to mitigate climate change.

By 2030, according to the UN, there will be 41 mega-cities around the world with populations of greater than 10 million people. Not only will these mega-cities control the lion’s share of the world’s global economic and financial resources, they will also largely determine the future of innovation — and that could have a major impact on how we think about America’s hub-and-spoke model of innovation. If you think about how innovation works in America, a relatively small metropolitan area such as Austin or Seattle (both of which do not rank among America’s 10 biggest cities by population) can have a disproportionate impact on the future of national innovation. That’s a pattern repeated around the country, as even smaller metropolitan areas — places like Raleigh-Durham or Chattanooga — also play an important role in pushing forward U.S. innovation. Even freewheeling Silicon Valley has always been based on its density of ideas, not the density of its population. Yet, all the current trends suggest that this uniquely American system of innovation, in which innovation is so geographically diverse and spread out across so many hubs, is about to sustain a major challenge from the relentless pace of urbanization around the world. Just 40 years ago, there were only 3 mega-cities in the world: New York, Tokyo and Mexico City. Now there are 28, and there are plenty more waiting in the wings. It’s now become conventional wisdom that cities are the engines of growth, progress, jobs and prosperity. And the bigger the cities are, the bigger is that potential engine. Viewed from this perspective, it’s almost impossible to see any way that the United States can keep up with the growth of Asia’s mega-cities without making changes to its national model of innovation. Take a look at the projected map of global mega-cities created by Bloomberg – of the 41 mega-cities in the world by 2030, 24 will be in Asia. By way of comparison, North America will have only three mega-cities: New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City. South America will have five: Bogota, Lima, Sao Paulo, Rio and Buenos Aires. Even Africa — with Lagos, Luanda, Kinshasa and Johannesburg — will have more mega-cities than North America. You can already glimpse how the inexorable logic of the mega-city is going to play out. Take America’s two mega-cities, New York and Los Angeles. A recurring theme in New York tech circles has been that New York City has finally caught up to Silicon Valley as America’s new innovation leader, based largely on the remarkable confluence of so many industries – media, finance, fashion – being based in such a densely populated urban space. That’s exactly the right environment for new technologies to take advantage of network effects. And Los Angeles seems to be experiencing a new tech boom these days, giving us a whole host of interesting new start-ups. Again, sheer population density is one of the factors at work. “Silicon Beach” is showing signs of being a rival to Silicon Valley these days. As a recent paper from Kristin Ljungkvist of Uppsala University in Sweden points out, it’s not only technological innovation where these mega-cities have the potential to play a huge role in future innovation. On just about any issue with a political angle to it — climate change, poverty, transnational crime, pandemics and counterterrorism – there’s a good chance that mega-cities are going to be at the forefront of new innovation and creative thinking. The specific example cited by Ljungkvist in her paper is New York City. In areas such as counterterrorism, New York City is already a national leader. In many ways, says Ljungkvist, New York is acting like its own city-state, with its own approach to climate change and its own counterterrorism policy. And all this policy innovation drives economic growth as part of a virtuous circle: “Local representatives, when they get involved in global issues such as climate change, do it primarily to ensure continued strong economic development for the metropolitan area.” After all, as the UN argued in its 2013 report “World Urbanization Prospects,” innovation is the single most important weapon these mega-cities have to deal with problems ranging from transportation to health care. In short, to deal with the massive crush of higher population, mega-cities have to get smarter faster. They have a real need for all the innovations that can transform them into “greener, healthier, friendlier and more efficient metropolises.” Of course, not everyone is upbeat about the growing role of mega-cities. McKinsey has pointed out that some of the talk about mega-cities may be overhyped: “Contrary to common perception, mega-cities have not been driving global growth for the past 15 years.” And other researchers have highlighted how mega-cities present their own unique socio-economic problems — everything from traffic congestion to slums — created by such dense population growth. Joel Kotkin, for example, sees mega-cities as “a tragic replaying of the worst aspects of the mass urbanization that occurred previously in the West.” So what does all this mean for U.S. innovation? For one thing, tech innovators chasing new opportunities may choose to move to America’s biggest cities in even greater numbers, further exacerbating demographic trends of population shifting away from suburbs to urban metropolises. Immigrants, who typically cluster in larger cities, may play an even greater role in guiding the future of American innovation. And larger cities not typically regarded as national innovation leaders but on the demographic cusp of becoming a mega-city – Dallas, Houston, Miami and Phoenix — may increasingly find their innovation prospects improved at the expense of regional hubs that have smaller or declining populations. With the rise of mega-cities, Washington policymakers and Wall Street investors may find it harder to sell the Silicon Valley story abroad. Remember when just about every city in the world was attempting to build its own version of Silicon Valley? If mega-cities in China, India and Nigeria take off as many suggest they will, then policymakers could be talking about implementing a “Chengdu” or an “Ahmadabad” or a “Lagos” model rather than a “Silicon Valley” model. That would imply not just a new language of innovation, but also a radically new way of thinking about America’s role in global innovation. When it comes to innovation, maybe size does matter.

Smart Cities: A Solution to Climate Change For a growing number of businesses, collaboration between companies and even industries is critical to success. Respected Harvard professor Amy C. Edmonson and journalist Susan Salter Reynolds team up to show how one creative startup exemplifies this new, intensely interactive form of leadership in Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016). The following excerpt about the potential of smart cities has been excerpted from Chapter 1: ”Building the Future.” Cities as Problems, Cities as Solutions Historically, cities have gotten a bad rap. Cities are resource hogs. Higher average living standards in cities compared with rural areas translate into greater energy use and higher per capita carbon emissions. Cities are responsible for roughly 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions but house only half of the population. The city as physical or moral cesspool is an engrained postindustrial image. Here urbanization and squalor go hand in hand. In part this notion is a true depiction of rapid, unplanned growth. Vast population increases at the edges of so-called megacities give rise to health hazards, desperate places, shantytowns replete with environmental risks, and crime, often in the shadow of affluent suburbs. The favelas of Brazil provide vivid examples. As many have noted, global urbanization brings a host of challenges. The UN World Economic and Social Survey 2013: Sustainable Development Challenges report calls for a “transformation of the energy system,” particularly in cities: To achieve this energy transformation together with food and nutrition security, sustainability of cities, and other development goals after 2015, large-scale investments will be needed. Such investments will require sufficient levels of supply of long-term financing, and they will have to be carried out both by public actors through increased public expenditure and by the private sector, which will depend critically on creating the right incentives for investments in sustainable development. Well-Developed Cities Showcase Sustainable Development A recent study comparing data from 100 cities in 33 nations showed that cities without well-developed public transportation had dramatically higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Denver, for example, weighed in with twice the greenhouse gas emissions per capita (21.5 tons) of New York City and even Shanghai. In his popular albeit controversial 2010 book, Green Metropolis, David Owen makes the case that cities are, in fact, an ecological way to live because they boast density, which means less driving compared with suburban communities. Economist Edward Glaeser makes a similar point in Triumph of the City. Both books fairly gush about the social, economic, and environmental virtues of cities. A growing chorus of voices conjures the city as a sparkling solution to environmental ills, with images of silent transportation gliding along, energy-producing architecture in harmony with the environment, and landscaping both beautiful and edible. Open space, places to walk and play. Cafés everywhere. Green parks. Bicycles. The Emerald City. Interest in smart sustainable cities has grown as people in different sectors investigate pieces of the urban population boom puzzle. The idea that humans are the problem, long a tenet of the environmental movement, has shifted a bit to make room for a vision of people as problem solvers. Despite substantial differences in beliefs, strategies, principles, and methods, most agree that an explosion in the apparent need for cities offers a clear, if challenging, opportunity for getting it right, for building cities that are viable and dynamic, exciting and green, and hotbeds of innovation and efficiency. Smart Urbanization Peter Calthorpe, a founder of the Congress of New Urbanism, an organization promoting sustainable, walkable, mixed-use urban communities, and the author of Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, has written that “urbanism is the foundation for a low-carbon future,” and the most cost-effective solution to climate change, even more so than renewable energy. Urbanism allows us to do more with less. Calthorpe’s eponymous urban design firm, Calthorpe Associates, was named one of the 25 “innovators on the cutting edge” by Newsweek for its work redefining models of growth in America. “Good urbanism,” Calthorpe maintains, is defined by “three basic principles”: One is human scale, which has to do with designing public spaces around the pedestrian rather than the car. Ironically, human scale can exist in incredibly dense places, like Manhattan, or in relatively low density places, like the historic centers of our rural towns. . . . Diversity is another key ingredient of urbanism . . . you have to have a range of uses mixed together, you can’t isolate housing and shopping and employment into separate zones. . . . You [also] need a diverse population — you can’t isolate age groups, income groups, and family types. . . . The third principle, which wasn’t historically part of urbanism, is conservation and restoration. These principles — human scale, diversity, and conservation — are not at odds with smart technologies but rather are complementary strategies for improving urban livability and resource use. Meanwhile cities are widely recognized as engines for economic growth and innovation. Today only 600 urban centers generate about 60 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). Tokyo, with its 35 million people and nearly $1.2 trillion in economic output, ranks among the world’s top 15 economies, larger than the nations of India and Mexico. Cities encompass the largest and fastest-growing concentration of natural resource consumption and are, consequently, a logical place to focus sustainability efforts. Taken together these perspectives — viewing cities as solutions that foster livability, sustainability, and innovation — have laid a foundation for smart-city innovation.

Application of Artificial Intelligence to smart city is very crucial to process the patient data for efficient treatment strategies and checking for the survival rate. In this paper, we have presented a better model than the one presented by [45] which only implemented the AdaBoost algorithm, with F1 Score of 0.86 on another COVID-19 patient dataset. We have discovered that some datasets are imbalanced and cannot be predicted. Meanwhile, 11 features were considered in this latest research with data for patients who were admitted to regular ward, semi-intensive ward, intensive care units which are: Hematocrit, Basophils, Eosinophils, Platelets, Mean platelet volume, Hemoglobin, Mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), Leukocytes, Lymphocytes, Mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) and Red blood Cells. Therefore, the model that we have proposed is actually based on the age quantiles of the distribution of this life table survivorship function. The analysis addressed in this research is significant for studying longevity risk and survival rate of patients. Several performance metrics were employed to evaluate the proposed solution, including checking for the precision, recall, F1- Measure, False Alarm Rate (FAR), Detection Rate (DR) and Accuracy. While the above stipulated performance metrics were based on True Positive (TP), True Negative (TN), False Positive (FP), and False Negative (FN). On the dataset usage, we have considered four algorithms to determine which is better for this predication. The experimental results show that kNN, and Decision Tree both obtained a score of 99.30% while Nave Bayes and Logistic Regression obtained 91.70% and 99.20%, respectively on TP rate for negative patients. For positive covid patients, Nave Bayes outperformed other models with a score of 10.90%. On the other hand, Nave Bayes obtained a score of 89.10% for FP rate for negative patients while Logistic Regression, kNN, and Decision Tree obtained scores of 93.90%, 93.90%, and 94.50%, respectively. Whereas, kNN, and Decision Tree both obtained a score of 0.70% outperforming Nave Bayes and Logistic Regression whose FP rate for positive patients are 8.30% and 0.80%, respectively. The future work will be implementing a deep neural smart city network with the combination of CXR scanning computer vision models to showcase the life survivorship demographic and healthcare data with different processing models. This can provide an automation of the prediction and diagnostic system to provide rapid screening and detection for COVID-19 affected and regions patients and prepare us for future pandemic outbreaks.

Waste management is an important process that consists of various sub-processes such as collection, transportation, processing, disposal, managing, reuse and monitoring of waste materials. A smart waste management system solves a lot of problems, like air pollution, the piling up of garbage in the streets, the spread of contagious diseases due to poor garbage maintenance, inefficient waste collection, etc. Level detection sensors are used to indicate the level of the garbage to the garbage removal truck driver’s smart phone once the garbage reaches a certain level that is set by the management of the system. This greatly contributes to the country’s smart infrastructure [10] . IoT infrastructure needs to be brought to action in different areas of waste management. The main aspect of the sensors used in smart waste management is to sense essential data like the quantity of garbage, types of garbage, and send it to the system either in a direct way or an indirect way through the nearby communication devices attached to the cloud server and the devices connected to the smart city system as in Fig. 2 . This system maintains biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste separately. This will help to reduce the likelihood of the garbage bin overflowing and, as a result, keep our environment clean [9] . This type of network, which consists of sensors and data collection, would aid in the effective orga- nization of various waste management processes, such as determining the level of filling at which collection should take place and classifying garbage types. IoT paves the way for a fully coordinated system with a much broader view and a database system to keep the environment clean.

Will the environmental cost of semiconductor production be offset by their contribution to the long-term green transition? Semiconductors facilitate the transition toward a decarbonised economy. Yet, the chip industry must build sustainability into its manufacturing processes to align with a net zero future.

Semiconductors are the basic building blocks of modern computing. They are vital components of all electronic systems, from smartphones to cars. But the environmental cost of manufacturing them is becoming increasingly problematic. Energy demand is rising as chip design grows more intricate, with the manufacturing of advanced 3nm chips (N3) predicted to consume up to 7.7 billion kilowatt-hours annually.

The rise of the semiconductor industry was key to American hegemony both directly and indirectly. In the late 1970s, there was genuine fear in the Department of Defense (DoD) that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union militarily. Under the leadership of William Perry, the DoD switched to a military strategy that was heavily dependent on semiconductors, known as the Offset Strategy.

The rise of the semiconductor industry was key to American hegemony both directly and indirectly.