On 29 December, just as the summit between Zelenskyy and Trump was finishing at Mar-a-lago, the PLA Eastern Theatre Command announced that it had commenced exercise "Justice Mission 2025" in the Taiwan Strait. I have just published an assessment of the exercise. mickryan.substack.com/p/justice-mi...
Good & detailed analysis of the US campaign in Venezuela, including the prospect of a war. "The risks of violence in any post-Maduro scenario should not be downplayed. Many senior military officers could resist regime change." www.crisisgroup.org/latin-americ...
Kyle Muldoon thought he might never get to watch an Eagles game with his son KJ, who was born with a rare and fatal liver disease that was treated with an individual CRISPR therapy.
#STATSummit
How does NATO monitor and defend its airspace? It operates a large, diverse & growing network of sensors & interceptors on air, sea and land—but also one with significant limitations when it comes to countering low-level drone incursions in peacetime.
www.economist.com/europe/2025/...
'The ‘C’s’ between 1909 and 2024 fall into two distinct groups; former Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) Chair Sir Percy Cradock talked of ‘sword men’ and ‘gown men’, reflecting the increasing civilianisation of SIS from the 1950s onwards' www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Submit a 7-minute video pitch. Open for submissions June 1 – August 31, 2025.
Learn more about DARPA Ag x BTO Special Topic – Agricultural Defense Innovation here: darpa.mil/research/progr…
Topics include early warning systems, rapid-response countermeasures, massively accelerated crop engineering, integrated threat prediction/modeling & attribution.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency BTO (us!!!) is seeking disruptive solutions to defend U.S. agriculture (crops and livestock) against chemical/biological threats!
darpa.mil/research/progr…
ISW is seeking a full-time Middle East Security Program Researcher to provide timely open-source research and analysis of the geo-strategic dynamics of the Middle East region and how those dynamics will affect U.S. national security interests.
For more info & to apply: isw.pub/MiddleEastRe...
4/ PRC is possibly conducting bathymetric surveys in the strategically significant Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines.
We’ve now seen ground-based missile use, tho’ Pakistan’s Fateh is a non-nuclear tactical ballistic missile & not in same category as some longer range systems. As for nuc signalling, it depends whether you believe Pakistan’s earlier statement or the def minister’s later one
bsky.app/profile/shas...
Things we have not (yet) seen in this crisis:
- Fighter jets crossing the border/LoC
- Use of ground-based dual-capable missiles
- Nuclear signalling of a sort we previously saw in in 1990 & 1999 (at least not publicly)
- Large-scale mobilisation of ground forces, as in 2001/02
Indonesia names Ray Dalio and Jeffrey Sachs as sovereign wealth fund advisers
www.ft.com/content/d90a401b-d086-44...
Check out our latest Hot Plasmids post, featuring cool new tools like self-labeling constructs from @dozenoaks.bsky.social, an improved voltage sensor from @michaelzlin.bsky.social, prime editing in dicot plants, and more!
blog.addgene.org/hot...
Plasmid of the Day
pcDNA3-Y392C-WLS-HA-IRES-GFP
Depositor: Joseph Gleeson
Purpose: Expression of WLS-HA protein (Y392C mutant)
www.addgene.org/178062/
‘Game changer’: German spending plans lift bond market’s growth forecasts
www.ft.com/content/f54f6eb2-5858-44...
Europe needs Friedrich Merz to succeed | Opinion
www.ft.com/content/61eef114-b42d-45...
Big Tech’s AI ambitions deliver funding boost to nuclear reactor race
www.ft.com/content/2d84198e-7eeb-41...
Tested across biology, sociology & more, POPPER matches PhD-level accuracy in hypothesis validation. Cuts days to hours while keeping stats tight.
How It Works: POPPER uses LLMs (Claude mostly) to break hypotheses into testable parts, then runs sequential experiments to falsify them. No rejection? It’s tentatively supported. Popper’s philosophy + AI power. github.com/snap-stanford/POPPER”
Fantastic work by @kexinhuang.bsky.social at Stanford (arXiv: 2502.09858)
Validation of hypotheses for experimental planning and verification based on the falsification principle by Karl Popper.
The Future just most a lot closer!!!
Michael Lauer, deputy director of the National Institutes of Health’s extramural research, will leave the agency at the end of the week.
It’s been a tough few years. But innovation doesn’t stop. Science still advances, improvements and breakthroughs will still happen. The pace is different but it’s not gone.
I know it’s tough to see @adamfeuerstein.bsky.social and we at DARPA BTO still believe & will get after it.
#stayInTheFight
Ready to jump into base editing? Check out our updated CRISPR 101 blog post "Cytosine and Adenine Base Editors"!
blog.addgene.org/sin...
We're hiring here at DARPA! A "Program Manager" is effectively an intrapreneur and we're going after Synthetic Biology #SynBio super hard.
Please fwd to interested people!
www.linkedin.com/posts/mkoeri...
🎉🎉 Congrats! 🥳
If you're interested in unveiling the NATURA way, you can find the plasmids here: www.addgene.org/browse/artic...
The CRISPR companies are not OK
Today, in @statnews.com - a must-read story from my colleague @jasonmast.bsky.social
www.statnews.com/2025/02/06/c...
We're hiring here at DARPA! A "Program Manager" is effectively an intrapreneur and we're going after Synthetic Biology #SynBio super hard.
Please fwd to interested people!
www.linkedin.com/posts/mkoeri...
