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Dec 31, 2023 | 
thehill.com | Lars Erik Schonander
The recent congressional testimonies of university presidents before the House of Representatives have brought attention to the risks of antisemitism on campus. Following the money is an obvious next step to see how this problem has grown: U.S. colleges and universities have received billions from Qatar over the years, and Qatari money has been shown to correlate with antisemitic incidents on campus.
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Nov 20, 2023 | 
americanaffairsjournal.org | Lars Erik Schonander
The Russian-Ukrainian War has seen the rise of new tactics involving small commercial drones, including the use of drones as improvised anti-tank weapons, suicide weapons, and reconnaissance tools for artillery units.
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Oct 20, 2023 | 
thehill.com | Thomas Hochman |Lars Erik Schonander
Last month, the Biden administration announced that the Department of Transportation would be adopting categorical exclusions for electric vehicle charging projects. The goal, per the Council on Environmental Quality, is to “unlock faster reviews” for charging stations as part of the administration’s efforts to deploy electric vehicle infrastructure.
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Oct 4, 2023 | 
thenewatlantis.com | Lars Erik Schonander
Sign in or Subscribe Now for audio version Any time you walk outside, satellites may be watching you from space. There are currently more than 8,000 active satellites in orbit, including over a thousand designed to observe the Earth. Satellite technology has come a long way since its secretive inception during the Cold War, when a country’s ability to successfully operate satellites meant not only that it was capable of launching rockets into Earth orbit but that it had eyes in the sky.
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Sep 11, 2023 | 
newsweek.com | Lars Erik Schonander |Michael Kratsios
The House China Select Committee made a splash earlier this year. One of its first moves was to investigate Chinese cybersecurity risks in U.S. ports. Visiting the Port of Miami, committee members argued that the Chinese Communist Party could be spying on American ports through Ship-to-Shore (STS) cranes we buy from ZPMC—a Chinese state-owned enterprise. These cranes load and unload cargo from container ships, making them essential for America's trade with the rest of the world.
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Aug 8, 2023 | 
nationalinterest.org | Lars Erik Schonander |Dan Lips
With the House of Representatives’ passage of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill, Congress is poised to take another step to prohibit the government’s use of drones produced by Chinese companies. There’s a growing bipartisan consensus that government agencies should not operate surveillance drones with ties to adversary governments.
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Jul 9, 2023 | 
nationalinterest.org | Lars Erik Schonander
A recent book examines the United States’ usage of sanctions, the unintended consequences of such, and how these measures aren’t going away any time soon. Agathe Demarais, Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests (New York City: Columbia University Press). 304 pp., $30.00. According to the Financial Times, back in October 2022, 70 percent of Europe’s fertilizer and 50 percent of aluminum production capacity was offline due to energy shortages.
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Jun 29, 2023 | 
thelampmagazine.com | Lars Erik Schonander
Most Americans in the United States devote very little time thinking about our neighbors in Latin America. That’s a shame: its history reads like an epic, filled with characters and nations attempting to achieve everlasting glory, and, when they dramatically fail, leading to unfortunate consequences for everyone involved. The Venezuelan general Simón Bolívar’s turbulent career is the prototypical example.
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Jun 4, 2023 | 
thehill.com | Lars Erik Schonander
In March, Arkansas became the latest state to by state and local agencies in response to cybersecurity concerns. The state joined Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee in recently passing bills restricting government agencies’ use of Chinese-manufactured drones, following earlier actions by the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. While some of these efforts cover all Chinese drone manufacturers, many are focused on one company: DJI.
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Mar 26, 2023 | 
thehill.com | Lars Erik Schonander
The law would reform the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA), which requires the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to collect data on foreign ownership of agricultural land in the U.S. The law was passed in 1978, but for decades, USDA has been lax in enforcing the law and properly tracking foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land. This laxity has resulted in dangerous Chinese purchases.
