(Credit Image: Pierre Markuse, CC BY 2.0) The global wildfire is engulfing the world. Throughout 2019, immense swaths of Australia, California, Alaska, Russia, central Africa, and the Amazon basin, were part of this immense bonfire. This conflagration took place after the historic fire seasons of 2018, 2017, 2016… (David Wallace Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, Life …
Category Archives: Featured
Artificial Intelligence, climate change and the U.S military
AI, AI Everywhere The Artificial Intelligence field (AI) is creating a continuity that encompasses climate change science and the preparedness of the U.S. military to climate risks. This continuity appears through the central role of AI in two apparently disconnected foresight civilian and military uses. AI and climate science Climate Central published in Nature a …
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How to Analyse Future Security Threats (4): Scenarios and War
This article focuses on scenarios for war. It explains first why scenarios need to be mutually exclusive. Then it provides logical templates for building scenarios dealing with war. Finally it offers an updated bibliography of scenarios for Syria over time. Towards an Operational Methodology to Analyse Future Security Threats and Political Risk (1) Methodology to …
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The U.S. Army versus a Warming Planet
The strange case of the disappearing report In August 2019, the Centre for Climate and Security published an article about a recent publication by the U.S Army War College. The document, entitled “Implications of Climate change for the U.S Army”, however, cannot be found anymore on the “publications” page of the U.S Army War College. …
Quantum Optimization and the Future of Government
Quantum optimization is a direct practical application for quantum computing. Moreover, actors can already use it, even with the nascent and imperfect quantum computers currently available. The Volkswagen Group, Daimler, Ericsson, Total, Airbus (including with the Airbus Quantum Computing Challenge – AQCC)), Boeing, EDF, are examples of companies with ongoing research projects involving quantum optimization. …
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Foreseeing the Future Quantum-Artificial Intelligence World and Geopolitics
Google has reportedly achieved the famous Quantum Supremacy, as the Financial Times first reported on 20 September 2019.
Despite heated discussions regarding the validity of the claim (e.g. Hacker News), this reminds us that a world with quantum computers is about to be born. All actors need to take this new future into account, in all its dimensions. This is even truer for those concerned with international security at large.
This new series focuses on understanding the coming quantum-AI world. How will this future world look like? What will be the impacts on geopolitics and international security? When will these changes take place…
Mapping the Chinese Private Actors Race to Quantum
This article maps the Chinese private effort in the race to quantum (updated 11 October 2019). It builds upon the previous article, which detailed the efforts of the large Chinese IT companies in terms of Quantum Information Science (QIS) investments (★ The Chinese BATX in the Race to Quantum Computing: from Research to Venture Capital …
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The Chinese BATX in the Race to Quantum Computing
This article focuses on the participation of the Chinese Web and IT giants in the race to quantum information science (QIS) and technologies.
We look at Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Huawei involvement in QIS. Their quantum activity ranges from setting up research and development labs and centres to launching quantum cloud platforms. It goes from quantum computing research to emphasis on users’ applications. We highlight investments when available. Alternatively, we estimate activity, when possible, through other means. […]
Mapping the Race to Quantum Computing: The UK National Quantum Technologies Programme
Quantum computing and more generally Quantum Information Science (QIS) are more than ever on the global agenda. We focus here on the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme and policy, and how the UK fares in the race to quantum technologies. This article is part of our ongoing research on the issue. With the first item …
The Midwest Floods, the Trade War and the Swine Flu Pandemic: The Agricultural and Food Super Storm is Here!
In May 2019, for the second time in three months, Central U.S. is hammered by record-breaking floods. Those floods are impacting Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska and Iowa (Susannah Cullinane, Hollie Silvermane, Sheena Jones, “Central US reels from week of deadly weather”, CNN, May 26, 2019). In Van Buren, Arkansas, the Arkansas River level reached …
