Cold War

Reports of the death of Stanislav Petrov hit the news yesterday. For a man whose decision might very well have saved the planet from nuclear annihilation, it is kind of sad that the reports were four months late. Mr. Petrov died in May, but the news did not reach the press at that time. 34 […]

The recent revelation that Russian entities funneled money into marketing on social media platforms like Facebook in order to create dissent within the American population, particularly regarding the 2016 presidential election, has made waves on social media, and for good reason.  With many Americans continuing to counter concerns about Russian meddling as either non-existent or […]

For many people born after about 1975, the 80’s was a time of adventure and rebirth from the gas shortages and economic downturn of the decade before. The first space shuttle, Columbia made its maiden flight in 1981; movie goers could take in everything from Terms of Endearment to Friday the 13th; and the geek […]

Caught between an ascendent China and an increasingly unreliable United States, Singapore’s diplomatic future is at the heart of a debate on who really calls the shots in Asia. The Lion City has historically had strong relations with both countries, an ally in Asia for Washington during the Cold War and one of China’s first […]

The request appeared reasonable enough. The Soviet Union wanted to send a relatively small team of scientists to an island in the Pacific administered by New Zealand ahead of an upcoming eclipse to conduct some harmless experiments. But it was 1956 and in those early days of the Cold War, anything the Soviets wanted to […]

Drugs, nukes and animal operatives: Project MK-Ultra, the CIA’s infamous human mind control project, wasn’t the only thing that was going on in the ‘60s. In that decade, writes Tom Vanderbilt for Smithsonian Magazine, “the U.S. government deployed nonhuman operatives–ravens, pigeons, even cats–to spy on Cold War adversaries. “ Unlike MK-Ultra, this project was never the subject of a Congressional hearing, but […]

Although it was introduced way back in 1966, and retired from service a whopping eighteen years ago, the SR-71 Blackbird remains among the most popular military aircraft of all time – and with good reason.  Despite its relative old age when compared to modern feats of aviation ingenuity like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or […]

Though it sounds like the plot of a movie the reality is that select Army engineers, Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and select Marines were once trained to employ backpack nukes. The scientists of Los Almos Scientific Laboratory created the W54 atomic warhead in the late ‘50s.  It was one of the smallest nuclear warheads ever […]

Today, with companies like SpaceX, Blue Horizon, and Boeing working tirelessly to find ways to reach the stars for less money, it’s become a commonly accepted truth that the space shuttle, while ambitious and an incredible feat of engineering, was never the economic answer to maintaining an orbital presence. The shuttle program was an immense […]

They were known as the illegals, men and women who adopted the identities of the dead, worked as priests, poets, actors and inventors, and quietly gathered intelligence for the Soviet Union during the long years of the Cold War. Based in nondescript American suburbs and bustling European capitals, they spent up to two decades developing […]

In a statement made on Thursday at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin called elements of the U.S. missile defense system placed in Alaska and South Korea a “challenge” to Moscow.  According to Putin, their presence leaves the Russian military no choice but to expand its own forces in response. The […]

The U.S. Coast Guard has released new statistics which indicate a historic drop in Cuban migration since the decision by former President Barack Obama to end the long-standing “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy in January. Since April 1st of this year, the Coast Guard has intercepted zero migrants attempting to flee Cuba and land on […]