News Updates

China has sentenced to prison the researcher who was first to use the nascent gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 to alter the genes of humans—twin girls—in ways that could be passed to future offspring. In several series of articles (here and here), Issues has examined the technical, social, ethical, and political aspects of human gene editing, including recent looks at how the scientific community can encourage positive and deter problematic research and why public involvement in its oversight is essential.

The US military’s Cyber Command is reportedly preparing information warfare tactics to discourage Russian senior officials and private elites from interfering in the 2020 US elections. For some deeper background, an Arizona State University professor recently explored in Issues how nations or other groups can use advanced information technologies, services, and tools to drive “weaponized narratives” designed to undermine an adversary’s institutions and culture, why the United States is particularly vulnerable to attack, and what it can do to prevent or counter emerging challenges.

The Navy pilot who gave the name “Tic Tac” to an anomalous airborne object he observed in 2004 off the California coast is speaking publicly for the first time, saying “its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered.… It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal.” The incident added to the lore of unidentified flying objects. But in Issues, a journalist examined the history of sightings, coming away skeptical—and suspicious that the military “may well have its own good reason for keeping the UFO story alive.”

In trying to return the American chestnut to Appalachian forests, some researchers are looking beyond conventional breeding techniques to new tools of genetic engineering to develop strains that aren’t susceptible to the fungal blight that caused their near-total disappearance, but critics from several quarters worry about the consequences. In Issues, a philosopher has examined the debate, finding that it has implications not only for these transgenic trees but also for how the public might address the potential risks and benefits of other emerging technologies.

Rather than trying to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change, from nations’ entire economies, it would be better for technical and political reasons to tackle hard problems in particular sectors, such as high-heat industrial applications, an energy researcher writes in the New York Times. In this vein, a senior analyst presented in the latest Issues a detailed innovation agenda for reducing particularly difficult-to-eliminate carbon emissions not only in industry but also in transportation and in electricity generation and distribution.

The social media giant Facebook has started limiting “political speech by nationality,” a law professor says, adding that the ban indiscriminately applies to “enemies and allies alike.” This misconnect stems from the larger problem that “too much of the responsibility to control speech in cyberspace rests in private hands,” a leading sociologist recently argued in Issues, proposing that “A combination of tech companies setting standards and Congress reviewing them seems to be a promising way to move toward a cyberspace that is less dangerous and wild, but not tamed.”

A Silicon Valley start-up that developed an augmented reality headset sold only six thousand of them in the first six months of availability, far short of the “at least” one million units its chief executive once promised investors, and even below the one hundred thousand later predicted—and now the company reportedly faces money problems. Such overhyping of new technologies has become common and is leading to economic losses and slowing innovation, an independent consultant recently argued in Issues, calling on all parties involved to “evaluate the economic promise of emerging technologies in more realistic ways.”

Manufacturing in the United States continues to lag, according to a key report that charts the activities of goods producers. Issues authors have watched this sector closely and offered an array of prescriptions, including focusing more attention on production as a crucial but largely overlooked step in the innovation process; capitalizing on the digital revolution to optimize manufacturing performance from purchasing to production; and beefing up education and training to upskill workers to handle the increasingly sophisticated jobs here now or on the horizon.

Racial disparities in the US criminal justice system have decreased in recent years, a new report says, but African Americans remain five times more likely than white people to be incarcerated, and the length of prison sentences for black people have actually increased, partially offsetting the advance. This persistent gap represents but one way that mass incarceration disproportionately hurts communities of color, legal experts argued in Issues, adding that overly rigorous crime policies and practices may actually do more harm than good.

William D. Ruckelshaus, the government official who shaped the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s and restored its vigor a decade later after its regulatory powers had been muzzled, died in late November. Issues particularly remembers him as the author of one of its most enduring articles—“Risk, Science, and Democracy”—in which he surveyed the challenges facing environmental policy-makers, concluding that “Our statutes should reflect the reality that environmental protection in an imperfect world means the assessment of risks and the ability to manage them as particular situations warrant.”