Author Archive
Ideas
The Fog of the Pandemic Is Returning
Millions of coronavirus tests may be happening without their results being made public.
Ideas
America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic
Businesses are reopening. Protests are erupting nationwide. But the virus isn’t done with us.
Ideas
The State and Federal Data on COVID-19 Testing Don’t Match Up
The CDC has quietly started releasing nationwide numbers. But they contradict what states themselves are reporting.
Ideas
A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s Coronavirus Numbers Are Flat
Few figures tell you anything useful about how COVID-19 has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does.
Ideas
How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe
The death and economic damage sweeping the United States could have been avoided—if only we had started testing for the virus sooner.
Threats
The US Has Tested Fewer than 5,000 People for the Coronavirus — and That's a Big Problem
By this point in its outbreak, South Korea had tested more than 100,000 people. The lack of data hurts U.S. government, corporate, and personal attempts to make decisions.
Ideas
The Official Numbers on the Coronavirus Are Wrong, and Everyone Knows It
Because the U.S. data on coronavirus infections are so deeply flawed, the quantification of the outbreak obscures more than it illuminates.
Policy
15 Things We Learned from the Internet Giants
The key takeaways from three days of testimony about Russia’s electoral mischief during the 2016 election.
Science & Tech
The Mysterious Printer Code That May Have Led the FBI to the Alleged NSA Leaker
Many color printers embed grids of dots that allow law enforcement to track every document they output.
Science & Tech
Why DARPA’s Augmented Reality Software Is Better Than Google Glass
A team of DARPA researchers says their technology is succeeding where Google Glass is failing. By Alexis C. Madrigal
Science & Tech
The Future of the Army: Less Soldiers, More Robots, More 'Lethality'
In the future, an Army brigade might have 3,000 human troops instead of 4,000, but a lot more robots. By Alexis C. Madrigal
Featured eBooks
Science & Tech
This Massive Robot Could Soon Join Marines on the Battlefield
The testing phase of DARPA's new Legged Squad Support System, an autonomous robot that can carry 400 lbs through rugged terrain, is expected to be completed by next summer. By Alexis C. Madrigal
Science & Tech
How the Atomic Bomb Helped Create the Internet
In 1945, The Atlantic's Vannevar Bush's answer to the prospective (and then real) horrors of science-enabled nuclear war -- odd as it may seem -- was to imagine a contraption to aid human knowledge acquisition.
