The far right’s calls for more air conditioning aren’t resonating with most voters.

The emissions quota trading on the pilot market will cover thermal power plants, steelmakers and cement producers.

Black holes are often misunderstood to be just that: dark and mysterious voids that are somehow akin to Alice in Wonderland’s mind-bending rabbit hole. 

But rather than a tunnel of nothing, a black hole is actually something — and a lot of it. The densest objects in the universe, black holes exert tremendous gravitational pull, gathering in the surrounding fabric of space and time, and generating huge disks of matter that whirl toward a black hole before falling in, past the point of no return. 

In recent years, as astronomers have been able to train more telescopes on the sky, for longer stretches of time, they have captured a surprising range of black hole behavior.

“It used to be that we didn’t have eyes on systems all the time,” says Erin Kara, an associate professor of physics at MIT. “Now we’re seeing that they can turn on and off at rates that are much faster than we ever thought possible. We see things are getting sucked in toward black holes faster than we thought, perhaps due to stars whipping around and getting trapped in a black hole’s accretion disk.”

Kara and her group in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research are at the forefront of black hole physics. She is using data from telescopes in space and on the ground to study the properties of black holes, especially supermassive black holes — the ultradense giants at the centers of galaxies. Supermassive black holes are the engines of galaxy formation. Kara, who recently earned tenure at MIT, seeks to connect the extreme physics of black holes with how galaxies such as our own Milky Way come to be.

“It’s amazing that we as humans can know anything about what’s happening billions of light years away,” Kara says. “There’s a lot of new open puzzles about supermassive black holes that I’m excited about.” 

Early impact

Kara was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as the youngest of four. Her mother was a nurse, and her father a doctor, so it felt only natural for Kara to follow their lead. She set out on a premed track at Barnard College of Columbia University. As part of the program that first year, she took an introductory physics class and was instantly drawn to the subject’s concrete, fundamental descriptions of the physical world, from the quantum to cosmic scales. 

“Physics was always the class that explained things at the ground level,” Kara recalls. “And I thought, wow, this is cool. I have to keep going with this.”

In class, she kept asking questions and wanting to know more. Her professor, astronomer Reshmi Mukherjee, took note and invited Kara to join her research group as a summer intern. The team would be working on new data from a telescope that was readying for launch. That summer, in June 2008, NASA launched the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope into low-Earth orbit, with the purpose of surveying the sky for sources of gamma rays — high-energy radiation that is produced by black holes, neutron stars, and other extreme astrophysical objects. 

When the telescope started sending back data, Mukherjee assigned Kara a project: to characterize two of the telescope’s unidentified gamma-ray signals. Both signals were bright, and the question was whether they came from nearby, within the Milky Way galaxy, or much further away. If the latter was the case, it would mean the sources were possibly quasars — a type of extremely active supermassive black hole that at the time was a rarity in astronomy observations. 

Kara got to work on the data and soon confirmed that both sources were indeed quasars. 

“It was a small discovery, but it felt awesome,” Kara says. “And I love that about astronomy, that there are so many unanswered questions, and even early on in your career, you can make an impact.”

Needless to say, Kara caught the astronomy bug, and soon opted to switch from premed to physics, though the new path was not always smooth. On Barnard’s all-women’s campus, introductory classes in physics were small, and professors were encouraging and approachable. In contrast, upper-level courses were held at Columbia, where Kara was one of a much larger, co-ed cohort. 

“It’s a very unique experience to be with all women in a physics environment, and then to see how my feelings about my own abilities changed, just based on the environment,” Kara reflects. “I went to Columbia and all of a sudden felt like I couldn’t do this. All these guys were much more confident and outwardly understanding of the material. In the end, I did well there too. And that juxtaposition helped me gain confidence and know, yeah, I belong here.”

Black hole reverb

After graduating with a major in physics and a minor in art history, Kara went abroad, to the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. She earned a scholarship there to pursue a one-year master’s degree in physics, but she ended up staying to complete a PhD on a topic that was just starting to grow roots: black hole X-ray reverberation. 

In 2009, her thesis advisor, Andy Fabian, and his team were looking through archival data from an X-ray telescope and noticed curious time delays in signals coming from around a black hole. They interpreted the signals as X-ray echoes, or reverberations. It was the first evidence of X-ray echoes around a black hole, and it helped to resolve a debate in the field over the source of the radiation. 

Her advisor determined that the reverb was a result of X-rays generated from the black hole’s corona — a crown-shaped aura of high-energy radiation immediately surrounding the black hole — that then bounced, or reverberated, off the swirling disk of gas and dust that circles a black hole, known as an accretion disk. 

“They had only found these echoes in one black hole. But the archive was full of data of these reverberation signals that no one had analyzed in this particular way,” Kara explains. “So I had my whole PhD to kind of play with this archive, and it felt very discovery-driven.”

Since that initial exploration, Kara has worked to advance the study of X-ray reverberation as a technique to map regions around black holes and other extreme astrophysical objects. 

A pivotal disruption

After earning a PhD in physics, Kara returned to the U.S. for postdoctoral work at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She intended to work on data from a new satellite, Hitomi — a Japanese mission that would detect far-off X-rays to help scientists map the large-scale structure and evolution of the universe. After 40 days, the scientists lost control of the satellite, which ultimately began spinning uncontrollably and broke apart in orbit. Before it failed, the telescope sent back one clean signal.

“It got one really good observation, which was unlike any spectrum we had ever seen before,” Kara recalls. 

The data confirmed that the satellite’s detector — a microcalorimeter that was developed at NASA — was sound. That technology is now at the heart of Hitomi’s successor, the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, which has been successfully taking data since its launch in 2023. Today, Kara leads a science group as part of the XRISM mission to analyze X-ray signals from supermassive black holes. 

Back then, however, with the end of Hitomi, she had to pivot. She started working with a new group at NASA Goddard that was gearing up for the launch of another telescope — the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER. In 2017, the telescope, which was developed and built by MIT researchers, was launched and attached to the International Space Station, where it measured the timing of incoming X-rays from astrophysical sources in deep space. 

The group Kara joined was analyzing NICER data for signs of tidal disruption events, which are instances when a black hole tears apart a nearby star. This was some of her earliest work on these dynamic sources, and she has since incorporated tidal disruption events — and data from NICER — as a main research area. 

At the hub

In 2019, Kara accepted a junior faculty position in MIT’s Department of Physics — a decision that to her was a “no-brainer.” 

“X-ray astronomy has its history at MIT,” Kara says. “Bruno Rossi, Hale Bradt, George Clark, Claude Canizares — it all started here. It was always a place that felt like a hub. And that was the draw.”

Today, she and her students regularly analyze data from various satellites and telescopes such as XRISM and NICER to better understand black holes and how they grow, evolve, and affect the galaxies around them. She continues to advance X-ray reverberation mapping, which has helped scientists map the extreme regions immediately surrounding a black hole. Her group is also studying signals from other extreme X-ray sources, including tidal disruption events, quasiperiodic eruptions, and galactic black hole outbursts. 

Kara also plans to explore data from future observatories, including the Ultraviolet Transiet Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT), which will continuously scan the entire sky for hot, ultraviolet sources; and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space telescope that will detect low-frequency gravitational waves from sources such as pairs of lopsided, David-and-Goliath black holes. 

And she’s also found time for a bit of black hole fun: In 2022, Kara collaborated with educators and music anthropologists at MIT to convert a black hole’s X-ray echoes to audible sound. As a musician herself — she sings and plays the violin — she was curious how a black hole’s cosmic energy might “sound.” The effect was otherworldly, to say the least. 

“One of the reasons that I love black holes is that they are very extreme, and feel very sci-fi crazy, and things don’t make sense, and physics breaks down around them. And at the same time, they’re super foundational to even why we’re here,” Kara says. “For reasons we don’t fully understand, the distribution of stars and gas and dust in a galaxy is dictated in part by the supermassive black hole at its center. Our sun is one of those stars. It’s all intertwined. And untangling some of that is what motivates me.”

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02682-1

Distinguishing leaf scorching from senescence under climate extremes

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02679-w

The 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome shows how acute thermal stress challenges prevailing assumptions about ecological resilience and adaptation. Extreme heat events are revealing physiological limits in forests that are not captured by conventional climate risk frameworks.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02681-2

Global greening has persisted under climate change, with feedbacks for Earth’s future climate. Here I look back on a critical 2016 study that resolved the patterns and drivers of global greening and consider how this work influences studies to monitor, model and manage greening.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02673-2

Mental health should not be viewed solely as a passive outcome of climate adaptation. Rather, it serves as a key determinant of cognitive capacity and shapes the effectiveness of climate adaptation. Here we call for the integration of mental health into adaptation assessments and policy implementation.

Time and time again, researchers have found numerous compromised Android devices for sale at large online retailers like Amazon. When these devices get individually reported, we have seen some noted efforts to take them down. But this is a systemic problem and Amazon and other major online retailers must make a corresponding systemic and intentional effort to stop these devices from entering people’s homes and ultimately their networks.

As a refresher: Last year, Google wrote that one major campaign, deemed BADBOX, affected 10 million uncertified devices that were running Android’s open-source software (Android Open Source Project or AOSP). These devices span from TVs and streaming devices to digital picture frames. Even now, someone can go on Amazon and Walmart and buy one of these devices. Not all of them come from Amazon and Walmart, but it’s fair to assume since they have the lion’s share of the market.

Most well-known Android-based devices don’t come with just “stock Android.” The operating system is usually Android plus additional features that the manufacturer wanted. These custom versions of Android often come with pre-installed applications that range from useful to innocuous bloatware to actual malware. Many Android OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) pre-install apps that may not be visibly represented by an icon in your list of installed apps. This obscurity makes the issue particularly hard for users to identify any potential threats.

Since the initial BADBOX analysis, there have been more reports of large campaigns and clusters of different devices participating in malicious activities that utilize people’s home networks to engage in illegal activity. Task forces in the private sector have made an effort to take down these existing Command and Control structures, but these actors may pivot and evolve to flood the market with more devices. 

Online retailers can stop this cycle. A multi-billion dollar company like Amazon should offer more resources, like their anti-fraud efforts, given that these products may have facilitated conditions for large scale attacks and illegal activity. It would also be helpful if they communicated malware-related take downs in a more visible way to consumers who are seeking very similar devices with shared characteristics.

Identifying these devices can be tricky, but it’s not impossible because they tend to follow a pattern. For example, the FBI warned consumers this year to avoid TV streaming devices that claim to provide free sports, tv shows, and movies, a common tactic used by the makers of these malware-filled Android devices that leverages people’s exhaustion from spending money on countless streaming services. We detailed what sorts of indicators to look for on a device you’ve purchased.

But it’s not just the storefronts. There are other parts of this ecosystem that need to improve too, like increased engagement in firmware transparency and the actual manufacturers of the devices themselves being held accountable for these malware laced products.

On Prime Day, we urge retailers like Amazon to better empower users with information they need to make safe and smart decisions.

Seeking transparency and accountability in Paraguay’s use of facial recognition, EFF, the Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (TEDIC), and the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the state for arbitrarily denying access to information about its implementation and use of the technology as a tool for mass surveillance that erodes people’s privacy rights. 

The case involves the Ministry of the Interior and National Police’s installation in 2019 of surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology in Asunción. Maricarmen Sequera, a lawyer and executive director of TEDIC, filed an information request with the ministry seeking details and protocols about the implementation and use of facial recognition systems and the personal data processing involved. 

The request sought information about, among other things, whether the state had conducted human rights or data protection impact assessments, as well as if it had developed measures and protocols for avoiding abuses, illicit uses of personal data, and other risks in the deployment of the facial recognition system.

The state denied most of the information requested, arguing that implementation details, protocols, and the processing of individuals' personal data were confidential security information. TEDIC contested the secrecy in courts, but the analyses lagged and ultimately sustained the denial of information. 

The petition filed last Friday (19) cites Inter-American standards upholding the public’s right to access information, particularly in relation to national security, that the Paraguayan authorities disregarded in denying TEDIC’s information request. The petition also argues that the refusal of information violated privacy and the right to informational self-determination.

The petition asks the Commission to recognize a violation of those rights and require the state to deliver the information requested. Further, the petition seeks an order compelling the state to adopt mandatory permanent mechanisms of active transparency regarding the acquisition, contracting, implementation, financing, functioning, and use of surveillance technologies by public bodies, especially those that incorporate processing of biometric data or artificial intelligence systems. 

It also asks the Commission to order the state to mandatory procedures for human rights impact assessments prior to acquiring and using surveillance technologies, particularly those that collect biometric data or use artificial intelligence.

The state’s lack of transparency in this case is not an isolated incident, both in Paraguay and in Latin America, where opacity in matters of security and surveillance is the unsettling rule. The situation gets worse with the increasing normalization of intrusive surveillance technologies by states in the region.

The Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission emphasized that states should disclose surveillance capabilities and contracts, and acknowledge state use of surveillance technologies at a meaningful level of detail, to facilitate essential public debate on the necessary limitations of surveillance in democratic societies and ensure compliance with international human rights law.

We hope that the Inter-American Commission upholds the robust safeguards in the Inter-American System and advances access to information and privacy rights in a case that can set a crucial precedent for the region.

This week marks four years since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protections for people seeking abortion care. Anniversaries are a moment to take stock, and over the last four years, EFF has seen firsthand how digital rights and reproductive rights have become increasingly intertwined. One major way this has happened: the fight over abortion has also become a fight over online speech and government censorship as a steady stream of proposed laws, cease-and-desist letters, lawsuits, and government investigations have targeted the websites and online resources that help people find and learn about reproductive healthcare.

This is an effort by anti-abortion government officials to mold the information ecosystem, restrict what people can read, and cut off the ways people communicate with one another. We’ve watched this build for years, and the encouraging news is that many of these efforts have failed. The worrying news is that they keep coming. And if they’re allowed to succeed, this could have repercussions for freedom of expression online beyond reproductive rights.

Targeting Sites That Just Share Information

The clearest tell that this is also a war on speech is that officials have aimed their efforts not just at abortion providers or the entities that prescribe and sell medication abortion, but also at websites that do nothing more than tell people what their options are, how to find a doctor, and where abortion remains legal.

Cease-and-Desists & Takedown Demands

State attorneys general have been hitting these online information hubs with cease-and-desist letters and takedown demands. Just this month, for example, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall sent cease-and-desist letters to multiple groups with abortion-related websites, including Plan C, a public health campaign that provides educational resources and research on abortion access. Plan C doesn’t sell or ship abortion pills. It simply provides information. Marshall’s office nonetheless claimed Plan C’s website “facilitates, aids, and abets” illegal abortion. The Arkansas attorney general similarly sent out cease-and-desists to several organizations regarding their websites, including Mayday Health, which, like Plan C, provides only information and does not directly prescribe or mail pills.

What’s especially concerning is that the state doesn’t have to win, or even file, a lawsuit to get what it wants.

In another example from earlier this year, North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley threatened legal action and ordered the Prairie Abortion Fund to scrub information off of its website, not because the fund sold pills, but because its site linked to several outside informational resources. The Attorney General primarily focused on the fund’s link to Plan C, meaning the biggest alleged issue was a link to a website that links to other websites where pills can be accessed.

What’s especially concerning is that the state doesn’t have to win, or even file, a lawsuit to get what it wants. Especially for smaller organizations and funds, a letter threatening legal action can be enough to chill their speech, causing them to remove important content and go quiet.

Censorship Mandates

Legislators in multiple states have also attempted to make it illegal to share resources on how to obtain an abortion, including on purely informational websites with a national or global audience. South Dakota recently passed a law making it a felony to “advertise” anything “described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing an abortion.” Language this broad can easily apply to websites that simply engage in First Amendment-protected advocacy or provide educational resources. Mayday Health, which operates one such website, has since sued the state in federal court to block the law. The lawsuit argues the law could reach something as small as wearing a sweatshirt that carries Mayday’s web address.

Other state legislatures have made similar efforts. Last year, for example, Texas introduced a bill that would have made it illegal to “provide information” on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drug. If you exchanged emails, had an online chat, or created a website that shared information about legal abortion services in other states, you could have violated this bill. Luckily this particular bill did not pass, but Texas has attempted to pass similar laws for several years now.

Dressing Censorship Up as Consumer Protection

A major way anti-abortion officials are targeting online speech is by weaponizing consumer protection and deceptive advertising laws, claiming that providing information about abortion violates them. This tactic is a threat to free speech rights. The First Amendment protects publishing truthful information on a public issue, and the Supreme Court has expressly said that includes providing information about legal abortion in a state where it is illegal.

Yet states like South Dakota have continued to use deceptive advertising claims to go after abortion speech. Last year, South Dakota sent a cease-and-desist and then filed a lawsuit against Mayday Health for running ads that simply read: “Pregnant? Don’t want to be?” with a link to Mayday’s website. The state claimed the ads were “deceptive.” Mayday then counter-sued in federal court, challenging South Dakota’s actions under the First Amendment. Though the federal judge ultimately declined to step in while the parallel state case was pending, she made a point of saying she believed Mayday’s website constitutes “speech subject to protection under the First Amendment.”

Other states have attempted to run the same play. Missouri sued Planned Parenthood in 2025 under its consumer-protection statute, calling a webpage that says abortion pills are safe an “unfair and deceptive” trade practice. Florida went even further, invoking its RICO law—a law typically used for organized crime—over the same kind of statement. Florida leaned heavily on a single study funded by an anti-abortion think tank, even as major medical organizations and decades of research put the serious-complication rate below half a percent. States should not be able to cherry-pick studies in order to erase online speech.

Going After Intermediaries & Erasing Whole Websites

Some officials aren’t content to restrict only certain abortion-related content—they want the websites gone entirely.

Take, for example, the cease-and-desist letters sent by the Arkansas attorney general last year. Letters were sent directly to internet intermediaries (entities that facilitate use of the internet, such as internet service providers, web-hosting providers, or things like search engines and social media platforms). The letters demanded that both a domain registry company and a web host stop supporting a site that discusses abortion drugs. But as we know, if we cut off the host or the domain, the speech disappears for everyone—not just for people in Arkansas.

Likewise, Texas’s 2025 bill would have required intermediaries to take down abortion-related content. It’s worth remembering that the imposition of civil and criminal liability on intermediaries also conflicts with a federal law that protects online intermediaries’ ability to host user-generated speech, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), including speech about abortion medication.

The push has gone federal, too. In March 2026, Senator Bill Cassidy and colleagues on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee pressed the FDA to use every tool it has against online sellers, including leaning on the domain registrars that keep these sites online.

Why This Should Worry Everyone

It’s tempting to see this as limited to the fight over reproductive rights. That would be a mistake. For people seeking care, the immediate harm is obvious: the internet is often the only place to find accurate, potentially life-saving information, and every letter, lawsuit, and takedown threat makes that information harder to find and riskier to share.

But the damage doesn’t stop there. We’re witnessing a live experiment in how to use consumer-protection laws, criminal statutes, and pressure on intermediaries to suppress a disfavored viewpoint, pull information offline, and make websites disappear. To think these tactics can only be used against abortion speech would be naïve. 

We hope courts and legislatures will continue to protect free speech online. But the continued drumbeat of threatening letters, lawsuits, and investigations is its own kind of harm. Here at EFF, we’ll keep defending the right to share and read information online—about abortion, and about everything else.

The Federal Communications Commission wants to require telecommunications providers to collect vast amounts of personal information from every person who wants a phone number in the name of combatting scam and spam calls. This plan will fail to combat the deluge of unwanted calls people in the United States receive every day while giving untrustworthy companies a gold mine of information that would harm everyday consumer’s privacy, access to communications, and ability to speak freely. 

The requirement to provide ID and an address would completely cut off the ability to have an anonymous phone line, which would mean many people in the most precarious situations imaginable: domestic violence and human trafficking survivors, unhoused people, and children without stable homes, would not be able to gain access to a crucial lifeline. EFF, along with ACLU, has submitted comments advising the FCC to abandon this proposal entirely. 

This Rule Will Not Decrease Spam Calls 

Requiring phone providers to collect consumers’ information will not appreciably decrease or eliminate unwanted calls. The FCC knows this because it confesses in its own rulemaking that “the most effective way to prevent unwanted calls from reaching American consumers is by ensuring they never enter the network.” Further, the Federal Trade Commission found that “a significant proportion, if not the majority, of unwanted robocalls originate from overseas.” Collecting the personal information of everyone who wants to make a phone call will not put a dent in fraudulent calls. 

What will address unwanted calls is the FCC’s STIR/SHAKEN technical standards, which already exist. While STIR/SHAKEN is not perfect, it is actually a technical solution to the problem of spam calls. And where less than 50% of American telecommunication providers have fully implemented the protocol, the FCC should put its energy toward 100% compliance to reduce the scale of unwanted calls, instead of collecting consumer’s private information. 

The FCC gives away the true reason for this proposal in their own comments: this is a move to shut down the very existence of anonymous phones, aka burner phones. FCC says in their comments: 

“Enhanced KYC information can assist law enforcement to more easily identify callers that use the network to perpetuate crimes by ensuring that voice providers have accurate and complete customer information. The KYC information gathered and verified would help ensure that law enforcement gets accurate information in response to subpoenas when investigating crimes. For example, can enhanced KYC rules assist law enforcement in investigating organized criminal groups that use the network to facilitate illegal activities? Can they be used to deter or detect trafficking operations that use communication networks to buy and sell illicit goods?”

Anonymous phones are not just used by people to break the law, they are also used by activists who wish to remain anonymous, privacy conscious consumers, people escaping domestic violence, people escaping human trafficking, journalists who need to reach out to confidential sources, and other people in desperate situations. Anonymous phone lines are a lifeline to many, one which this proposal would cut off without any alternative. 

Mass Data Collection Makes Us All Less Safe

Mass data collection of individuals does not address unwanted calls, but it does 

make us all less safe online. The telecommunications industry has proven time and again that they’re poor stewards of personal information. They’ve been at the center of several large-scale data breaches in recent years and their data practices leave much to be desired.

In 2024, AT&T disclosed two large data breaches. One in which 7.6 million existing account holders and more than 65 million former customers had their information leaked onto the dark web, and another in which more than 100 million customer account call and text logs were downloaded. Another large provider, Comcast, suffered a data breach in 2023 where nearly 36 million account holder’s information was stolen, including the last four digits of their Social Security Number and date of birth. 

In 2024, the nation’s CALEA infrastructure, which law enforcement uses to tap and trace calls, was breached in the Salt Typhoon attacks. Experts maintain that U.S. communications networks remain vulnerable, and even this administration acknowledges these attacks as an ongoing threat. 

If telecoms can’t even protect the most sensitive communications infrastructure in the nation how can we expect that they will protect our identities?

In addition to their poor cybersecurity practice, these providers themselves abuse the information in their possession. In Scott v AT&T, AT&T, among others, made consumer information available to hundreds of third parties without the consumer’s express consent. Though the case was dismissed because AT&T forces its consumers to sign arbitration agreements, it shows the complete lack of care for their consumers' privacy. 

A Lack of Anonymity Silences People 

Mass data collection of individuals just to have a phone number will also harm and silence people. Anonymity in calls provides people the safety they may require to organize themselves, speak freely, and seek services. Anonymous phone calls give people the courage to participate in politics, organize themselves, reach out to a suicide or sexual-assault hotline, an addiction-recovery sponsor, seek medical care, seek escape from a violent and coercive situation, and do much more. Without this anonymity, people may otherwise not do any of these things. 

It will prevent many from obtaining phone numbers at all. 

Not everyone has all the information the FCC wants to require. The FCC wants people’s physical addresses, defined so narrowly that it’s essentially a home address. Not everyone has a stable home address, so those individuals would be not able to get phone service. 

FCC suggests that a government-issued identification should be required for any phone service. About 15 million adult U.S. citizens do not have a driver’s license, while about 2.6 million do not have any form of government-issued photo ID. Others don’t have access to their identifying documents, they may be controlled by an abusive spouse or parent, human trafficker, cult, or someone else from whom a secondary phone line could help a person escape. Estimates show another 21 million adult U.S. citizens do not have a non-expired driver’s license, and over 34.5 million adult citizens have neither a driver’s license nor a state ID card with their current name or address. 

These numbers do not include non-U.S. citizens who do not have current government-issued identification, including undocumented immigrants who cannot obtain a state ID or driver’s license. Black American and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately less likely to have current drivers’ licenses, and Americans with disabilities and Americans with lower annual incomes are also less likely to have current driver’s licenses. 

The FCC’s proposal will not decrease the amount of unwanted calls. All it will do is set up a data collection regime that harms everyday, law abiding Americans. This proposal makes us less secure online, strips away our right to anonymous speech in calls, and actively disconnects those Americans who are already at the margins. EFF recommends the FCC discard this proposal in its entirety. 

The window for reply comments can still be filed until July 26th. Express comments, which are appropriate for most individuals, can be filed on the FCC website. See the suggested language below to help you get started. 

Earlier this month, a German court ruled that Google is liable for its AI search summaries. Rejecting defenses like “users can check for themselves,” and that they generally know “that information generated with AI should not be blindly trusted,” the court held that the AI’s summaries are reflections of the company and “above all an expression of Google’s business activities.”

This is the latest skirmish in a decades-old battle over internet publishing. Historically, there were two different types of information distributors: carriers and publishers. A phone company is a carrier. It’ll transmit whatever you say, even discussions about committing a crime. Words are words, and the phone company does not know—nor is it liable for—the words you choose to speak. A newspaper, on the other hand, is a publisher. It decides the words it publishes, and what quotes to include in its articles. If those words or quotes are defamatory or otherwise illegal, it’s liable...

When a car passes an automated license plate reader (ALPR), its plate is captured and instantly compared against a list of vehicles that police are actively looking for or that police have identified for real-time surveillance. These are called “hotlists,” and EFF has learned that one used by agencies across the country targets immigrants on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Agencies using Flock Safety ALPR systems commonly allow the plates their cameras collect to be compared against the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) hotlists. These hotlists are broken into "topics," such as "Gang or Suspected Terrorist," "Stolen Vehicle," and "Missing Person." 

Flock Safety told EFF via email: "Local agencies add/remove license plates from the NCIC list. The FBI curates the NCIC list, and pushes it out to local agencies. Once the list leaves the FBI, they do not see any agency alerts. They only see when a local agency adds or removes plates from the list."

But one list is different: The "Immigration Violator" hotlist is populated exclusively by ICE, and it is the only agency authorized to enter or maintain records in this system, according to the NCIC operator manual. It includes license plates associated with administrative warrants, which are issued by ICE agents without judicial review. The manual further describes the data:

The Immigration Violator File contains records on criminal aliens who have been deported for drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, or serious violent crimes and on foreign-born individuals who have violated some section of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

And: 

If the ICE has reasonable grounds to believe that the subject may be operating a particular vehicle or a vehicle bearing a particular license plate, the vehicle and/or license data may be included in the record.

Buried in the Flock Safety administrative interface, there is a drop-down menu where agencies select which NCIC topics to subscribe to. If Immigration Violator is selected, the local agency will receive an alert that a vehicle ICE is looking for has been sighted. According to Flock Safety, ICE itself does not get an alert, although the local agency may contact ICE to let them know. Many agencies also participate or collaborate with immigration enforcement (through, for example, 287(g) agreements) and may take steps to stop a vehicle based on one of these alerts. 

In many places, using ALPRs for immigration enforcement is against city or state law–or at minimum, against agency policy. But using this hotlist is immigration enforcement. 

For example, Sparks Police Department's ALPR transparency portal lists immigration enforcement among the "prohibited uses." Yet, records show Sparks utilizes ICE's Immigration Violator hotlist.

Many agencies publicly acknowledge using NCIC hotlists, but don't publish which ones. So, EFF filed public records requests with agencies around the country to figure how to identify at least which agencies may be using the Immigration Violator hotlist. Here are links to the documents from the 13 agencies that have responded so far. 

Agencies with the Immigration Violators Hotlist Enabled

• Blue Island Police Department, IL
• Sparks Police Department, NV

Agencies Using NCIC Hotslists, But Immigration Violators Is Disabled

• Baraboo Police Department, WI
• Boonsboro Police Department, MD
• Elmira Police Department, NY
• Franklin Township Police Department, NJ
• Medford Police Department, OR
• New Braunfels Police Department, TX
• Oro Valley Police Department, AZ
• Quincy Police Department, MA
• Reno Police Department, NV
• Roselle Police Department, IL
• Sterling Police Department, IL

Knowing whether your agency has this box checked isn't just useful information—it's the kind of evidence that can change how officials vote when a contract comes up for renewal. So, how can you find out if your local agency is using the Immigration Violator list? It takes some digging, and you may not be successful. But here's what has worked for us in some instances. 

STEP 1: Conduct background research. 

The first questions you want to try to answer are: 

• Does your local agency use Flock Safety ALPRs, and if so, 
• Are they using NCIC hotlists? 

To answer the first question, here are two sites to try: 

• AtlasofSurveillance.org - This is an EFF project to catalog the technologies law enforcement agencies use. You can search for your agency to see if they use ALPR.

• EyesonFlock.com  - This site includes an index of every agency that maintains a Flock Safety "Transparency Portal." These portals often disclose what hotlists an agency uses. You'll want to look for your agency, then click the outbound link to their transparency portal, if they have one. 

Once you're on the transparency portal, you'll want to look for two things. 

• Is "immigration enforcement" a prohibited use? If it is, you might find that the agency is violating its own policies. 

• Does the agency list "NCIC" as one of its hot lists? 

Not all agencies disclose this information, so even if you don't find anything, you can move on to these next steps. 

STEP 2: File a public records request. 

Every state has a law that allows the public to request information from the government. This can often be done by emailing the police department or sheriff’s office, using the agency's online public records portal. You can usually find these emails or portals quickly online by searching for the agency's website and contact information. You can also subscribe to a service like MuckRock, which is how we filed these requests. 

We have developed language to request the hotlist topics. It doesn't always work, due to differences in how agencies interpret public records laws, but it is still worth a shot. 

Note: This is template language. A Google doc version is available here (Google's Privacy Policy applies). 

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the [INSERT LOCAL PUBLIC RECORDS LAW - FIND THAT HERE], I hereby request the following information:

- The NCIC topics that the agency has selected.

Within the Flock Safety ALPR administrative controls for hotlists, there is an NCIC drop-down menu to allow an agency to choose which NCIC "Topics" it will alert on. For example, "Gang or Suspected Terrorist" or "Missing Person." 

You may provide this as a print out or a screen grab, or simply copy-paste the selected items. If you'd prefer to do a full CSV export, that is also acceptable but may take more effort.

I leave the format at your discretion, but I would prefer to use as little of your agency's resources as possible for this request. You can see an example here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28277589-20260414084201725/

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions at [CONTACT DETAILS].

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

STEP 3: Wait for a response.

Depending on the agency and the state law, it may take anywhere from days to weeks to receive a response. 

If the agency provides the records, they might look something like this: 

If "Immigration Violator" is checked, then yes–police are scanning vehicles for immigration enforcement. 

You can then put this information to work, sharing it with local reporters or bringing it directly to city officials who have the authority to modify, restrict, or cancel your agency's Flock contract. This is especially important if the agency has the box checked but also claims ALPR data is not used for immigration enforcement. Government officials like easy fixes, and "uncheck the box" is about as easy as it gets. But remember: If that's where it stops, the infrastructure for immigration surveillance stays fully intact, and the system is one policy, personnel change, or error away from being switched back on.

In many cases, you will not receive records. The agency may claim it's protected under legal exemptions or that it is not actually a public record under state law. For example, we received rejections from the Abington Police Department in Massachusetts and the Akron Police Department in Ohio.

If that happens, push back politely. You can explain that many other agencies across the country have produced this information and that it would greatly help inform the public. You can try contacting the police department's public information officer. Another option is alerting local press that the agency is refusing to disclose basic information about a public surveillance system, shutting residents out of decisions about how that system is being used. If you have the resources and time, you may also consider litigating a denial or lack of response.

You can also email your city council or board of supervisors member. Explain why this matters: The law enforcement agency may be facilitating immigration enforcement in secret, potentially in violation of its own policies. Ask them to use their oversight authority to demand answers from the agency, including pressing the vendor directly. Elected officials hold real leverage here: In most cities, either the council or the city manager controls the contract, and both are accountable to the public. If your agency's contract is up for renewal—or if a new pilot program is on the horizon—this is exactly the kind of information that should be part of that public debate before officials sign anything.

While we have filed dozens of these requests, we need locals to help gather even more. Drop us a line with the records you receive (or don't) at aos@eff.org. 

Over the past 80 years, America’s bold, sustained investment in scientific research, and the discoveries, ideas and innovations that flowed from it made America a world leader. The nation’s scientific leadership has been essential to our shared prosperity and national security, and delivered real benefits for all Americans.

On June 16, Scientific American released a special section, “The Young American Scientists,” which celebrates early-career professionals actively engaged in scientific research, and features commentary from MIT faculty on why they continue to be so devoted to curiosity-driven science, demonstrating how their hard work and dedication make Americans safer, healthier, and more prosperous. Among the section’s profiles are many MIT faculty, students, and alumni, who share their advice for young scientists and their reasons for optimism in uncertain times.

President Sally Kornbluth emphasizes the importance of curiosity-driven research, noting that discovery “is part of our American DNA and has yielded vast returns to the citizens of this country and the world.” She adds, “what’s needed is a rededication to public investment in American science. Even if I were not the leader of a premier scientific institution, this is what I’d say. Investing in American science is not a gamble; if you look back in time, there is no question about the benefits.”

Adds Institute Prof. Robert Langer: “What American science has done over the past 50, 100 years has been remarkable.”

Scientific American notes that at MIT, that commitment to discovery is reflected in initiatives such as Curiosity on a Mission and the Generative AI Impact Consortium, which are aimed at finding “solutions to real-world problems in a way that is beneficial to society.” “On one hand, we’re at a time, technologically, where things could not be more exciting [and] our science [could not be] more cutting-edge. At the same time, we’ve never seen a situation where people felt so uncertain about the continuity of science funding, particularly when it comes to the basic discovery science that fuels the economy and will fuel societal impact a decade or two from now,” says Kornbluth.

The first sparks

Witnessing invention can spark a lifelong fascination with science. After the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, Prof. Alan Lightman “became entranced with the idea of building a rocket” of his own. In his essay “My childhood in science,” Lightman describes how these early scientific memories and experiments have shaped him to be a well-rounded writer and physicist.

“Now more than ever, when much of the world, including the U.S., has lost its moral compass, leading to a dog-eat-dog mentality, we need science combined with literature, philosophy, history and art. We need to discover not only the physical world but also our own humanity,” writes Lightman.

Likewise, Prof. John Urschel, a former NFL player, emphasizes the importance of collaboration and having a wide range of interests. 

“A lot of good research happens when people can draw on tools, techniques and insights from different areas, disciplines and even fields. I hope we can encourage promising young scientists to establish strong, broad backgrounds and to communicate frequently with those outside their particular areas,” says Urschel.

Invention and discovery

Scientific American highlights students and alumni looking to better the world by doing everything from investigating neurological disease to securing our energy future. 

At MIT, Visiting Scientist Alice Stanton developed miBrain, a 3D tissue model of the human brain, to help scientists develop personalized treatments for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Stanton has developed a miniature version of miBrain, a brain-on-a-chip, to better test therapeutics.

Stanton notes “the road to effective treatments is long and bumpy,” compounded by cuts to federal funding. “When we have a loved one who gets sick, we want a treatment—we want something to cure them. It doesn’t come out of thin air,” she explains.

Bob Mumgaard PhD ‘08, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems is working to commercialize fusion power. “Whether in areas such as fusion—or in drugs by design for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or in [the creation of] materials we never thought possible—our ability to use new tools to tackle some of these big, meaty problems is super exciting,” Mumgaard emphasizes. 

Graduate student Alex Zhang tackles context rot: the phenomenon when AI language models degrade as they produce more information. To solve this issue, Zhang develops recursive language models (RLMs) that enable the model to work with itself to reevaluate reasoning.

“The types of research that I want to work on are things that I think should be shared for the benefit of people in general,” says Zhang. 

The benefits of scientific collaboration 

What happens when scientific disciplines join forces at MIT?

Prof. Emery Brown highlighted the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (HEALS), noting that the effort brings together scientists and engineers from a variety of backgrounds to tackle the most pressing health challenges of our times.  

Brown explains that with President Kornbluth’s support, HEALS encourages “faculty to look more deeply into solving health care problems. The enthusiasm for HEALS has been contagious across the campus.”  

MIT alumna Lucy Jones PhD ‘81, who is known for her work advancing public safety during earthquakes and for developing the first American earthquake drill called the Great ShakeOut, shared the necessity of collaboration in developing scientific solutions for pressing real-world problems.

 “Solutions have to be done in collaboration, which means spending time with policymakers,” says Jones. 

Jones also shares how scientific advances in computing have helped make Americans around the country safer when the ground starts to shake.

“My first year in grad school, I was reading paper seismograms. Now everything is computerized. We used to do field deployments; now we have permanent networks. We’re starting to use fiber‑optic cables as seismometers,” says Jones. “Computers have changed everything, including science.”

The state of American science 

Within the profiles, interviewees were asked what needs to change in American science right now. Many expressed concerns with federal funding. 

“I’m fortunate to work with extraordinary students and postdocs, but the infrastructure that lets them do their best work is under real stress: funding instability at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, immigration uncertainty for international scientists and an erosion of public trust in expertise,” says Prof. Feng Zhang.

Zhang developed CRISPR-based genome editing tools, which could increase our understanding human diseases and lead to new treatments. “We can lose the lead rapidly if we do not protect our innovation ecosystem,” he says.

Positive developments include the progress Prof. Alan Guth has witnessed in cosmology. 

“With new techniques, we’re able to unravel, to make sense out of, what we’re observing,” says Guth. “A lot of progress has been made on those lines, so in terms of the physics of the field, I think things are going great. But to me, the real problem is the prospects for future funding.”

Langer shares his faith in the durability and strength of America’s science and innovation ecosystem. 

“I look at the history of American innovation and education over the past 250 years, and it’s been spectacular,” says Langer. “Plenty of times there’ve been setbacks. We’ve had world wars, you know, we’ve had depressions, and people keep persisting and keep learning. They keep discovering and they keep inventing. So that gives me a lot of cause for hope. This is not the worst time by any means.”

Summer is the perfect time to curl up with a good book — and MIT authors have had much to offer in the past year. The following titles represent a selection of books published in the past 12 months by MIT faculty and staff.

Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy our book lists from 2025,  2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.

Happy reading!

Fiction and poetry

“We (the People of the United States)” (Penguin Books, 2026)
By Joshua Bennett, the Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT and professor of literature

Bennett marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. with a book-length work of poetry about the country and some of its distinctive figures. The piece features remarkable people or inventions from each of the 50 states, meditating on their place in the nation’s cultural fabric.

“The Race for Daphne” (Finishing Line Press, 2026)
By Sarah C. Beckmann, communications and marketing associate in the MIT Media Lab

A poetry collection structured as a crew race exploring girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood through the experiences of a rower and writer. These poems subvert the historical dominance of male heroes by celebrating ordinary female heroism, while examining love, home, and what it means to be an American woman today.

“Jezelle: Thief of Forks” (Self-published, 2026)
By Scott Austin Tirrell, director of administration and finance in the Art, Technology, and Culture Program

Abandoned by her father and raised by the streets of Grafton Notch, Jezelle survives by trusting no one. When a strange magic awakens within her, it offers more than escape — it offers power. But in a city that preys on broken children, power makes her valuable, dangerous, and hunted. To claim the life stolen from her, Jezelle must decide what she is willing to become.

Science and Engineering

“Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us” (Candlewick Press, 2025)
By Felice Frankel, research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering

Enlisting readers to “be the scientist” through vivid fine-art photographs, science photographer Felice Frankel zooms in and out on beautiful and brilliant moments all around us to reveal the chemical, natural, or physical processes — from viscosity and venation to chlorophyll and capillary action — behind scientific phenomena.

“Syntax: A Cognitive Approach” (MIT Press, 2025)
By Edward A. F. Gibson, professor of brain and cognitive sciences

This book lays out the grammar of a language from the perspective of a cognitive scientist, outlining the components of language structure and the model of syntax that Gibson advocates: dependency grammar, in which a word is connected to another word via a dependency arc to form a larger compositional meaning. This formalism can explain numerous aspects of word order universals across languages.

“Birds Up Close: An Engineer Explores Their Hidden Wonders” (MIT Press, 2026)
By Lorna J. Gibson, professor post-tenure in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering 

A renowned engineer and lifelong birder, Gibson explores the hidden microscopic structures and engineering principles that keep birds aloft and alive — how an egg forms, how a bird generates lift, how woodpeckers safely drill their holes, and much more. She also considers the longer view of birds in their habitats and natural history. Her up-close look at avian mysteries provides a perspective like no other, for the expert ornithologist and curious observer alike.

“Carbon Renewal” (MIT Press, 2025)
By Howard J. Herzog, senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative, and Niall Mac Dowell

In “Carbon Renewal,” Herzog and MacDowell discuss how technology and policy can come together to help us reach “net-zero” climate targets. The authors explore the rapidly evolving world of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), presenting the technological pathways of enhancing the land sink, biomass-based carbon capture and storage, engineered removal methods, and ocean-based carbon removal. They also discuss barriers facing CDR as well as ethical implications of this process. 

“Climate Change, Drinking Water Security, and Public Health: Global Challenges and Solutions” (Springer Nature, 2026)
Chapters by Libby Hsu, associate director of academics at MIT D-Lab

In her chapter, “Drinking Water Status Around the World and Its Effect on Health,” Hsu discusses the Earth’s water resources, which are found in a variety of settings. In her chapter, “Waterless and Low-Water Sanitation Technologies that Improve Quality of Life and Conserve Water Resources,” she shares her experience with sanitation challenges in the Global South and how that has reinforced the value of waterless and low-water sanitation technologies that are suitable for scaling around the world.

“A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines” (Penguin Random House, 2026)
By Thomas Levenson, professor of science writing in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing

In his latest book, Levenson searches for the origins of the most common arguments against vaccines: that they are unnatural; that they are more dangerous than the illnesses they claim to prevent; and that they are an affront to freedom. “A Pox on Fools” explores the human impulse to question and wonder — sometimes past the point at which the very act of questioning turns deadly.

“The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and Live” (Penguin Random House, 2025)
By Alan Lightman, professor of the practice of the humanities in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and Martin Rees

Lightman and Rees pull back the curtain on the field of science, revealing that scientists are driven by the same sense of curiosity, wonder, and responsibility toward a future that shapes us all. They guide us through the fascinating lives and minds of scientists around the world and throughout time, and provide an inside peek at what makes scientists tick — their daily lives, passions, and concerns about the societies they live in.

“Uncertainty in Climate Change Research: An Integrated Approach” (Springer Nature, 2025)
Chapter by Jennifer Morris, principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy and the MIT Energy Initiative, and John Reilly, senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management

Understanding future emissions scenarios is essential for preparing for climate change. The chapter “Emissions and Concentration Scenarios” examines how socioeconomic uncertainty contributes to overall climate change projections, and identifies key drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. It reviews the history of emissions scenarios and compares various approaches, including IPCC methods and formal uncertainty analysis techniques. The chapter concludes with lessons learned from over 40 years of socioeconomic scenario development for climate research.

“The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction — and a Search for Relief” (Harper Collins, 2025)
By Tom Zeller Jr., managing editor of Undark, published by the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT

From blinding migraines to severe headache disorders known as “clusters,” chronic head pain affects 40 percent of the population, many of them suffering in silence. Finally, “The Headache” reveals the science behind a group of disorders that is as much a curse as a cultural punchline, and leads to key insights into the nature of pain itself. Guided by his own decades-long struggle with cluster headaches, Zeller’s journey into headache science is at once intimate and panoramic.

Culture, humanities, and social sciences

“The People Can Fly: American Promise, Black Prodigies, and the Greatest Miracle of All Time” (Little, Brown, and Company, 2026)
By Joshua Bennett, the Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT and professor of literature

In this work, Bennett offers a series of profiles, carefully wrought to see how some prominent figures were able to flourish from childhood forward. He closely reads their works for indications about how they understood the shape of their own lives. In so doing, Bennett underscores the significance of the social settings that prodigious talents grow up in. He also offers reflections on his own career trajectory and encounters with these artists, driving home their influence and meaning.

“Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy” (Yale University Press, 2025)
By Francis J. Gavin, research affiliate of the MIT Security Studies Program 

It seems obvious that we should use history to improve policy. If we have a good understanding of the past, it should enable better decisions in the present, especially in the highly consequential worlds of statecraft and strategy. But how do we gain that knowledge? How should history be used? In this book, Gavin explains the many ways historical knowledge can help us understand and navigate the complex, often confusing world around us. 

“The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration: A Preliminary Assessment” (Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2025)
Edited by Gary Gensler, professor of the practice of global economics and management and finance in the MIT Sloan School of Management; Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship and professor of global economics and management at MIT Sloan; Ugo Panizza; and Beatrice Weder di Mauro

How might the economic and geopolitical positions of the Trump administration affect growth, trade, investment, inflation, stability, and the role of the U.S. dollar? This volume offers evidence-based, expert analysis to help decision makers understand the impact of tariffs, breaks in global alliances, government downsizing, deregulation, threats to the rule of law, and more.

“The Colony and the Company: Haiti after the Mississippi Bubble” (Princeton University Press, 2025)
By Malick W. Ghachem, professor of history

Many things account for Haiti’s modern troubles. A good perspective on them comes from going back in time to 1715 or so — and grappling with a far-flung narrative involving the French monarchy, a financial speculator named John Law, and a stock-market crash called the “Mississippi Bubble.” In "The Colony and the Company," Ghachem examines the economic transformations and multi-sided power struggles of that time.

“Retrench, Defend, Compete: Securing America’s Future Against a Rising China” (Cornell University Press, 2025)
By Charles L. Glaser, senior fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program 

Many believe China’s ascent will drive it to war with the United States. Yet this is far from inevitable; geography and nuclear weapons should ensure U.S. security. The real danger, Glaser contends, lies in East Asia’s territorial disputes, especially over Taiwan. To reduce the risk of war, Glaser makes a bold case for ending U.S. security commitments to Taiwan and carefully calibrating its policies on protecting South China Sea maritime features. 

“Trade in War: Economic Cooperation Across Enemy Lines” (Cornell University Press, 2025)
By Mariya Grinberg, associate professor of political science and MIT Security Studies Program affiliate

“Trade in War” is an urgent, insightful study of a puzzling wartime phenomenon: states doing business with their enemies. To explain why states trade with their enemies, Grinberg examines the wartime commercial policies of major powers during the Crimean War, the two World Wars, and several post-1989 wars.

“Constructing Economic Nationalisms in Brazil and India” (Cambridge University Press, 2026)
By Jason Jackson, associate professor in political economy and urban planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Conventional approaches cite India’s leftist “socialism” and Brazil’s right-wing authoritarianism to explain why India resisted foreign direct investment (FDI) while Brazil welcomed foreign firms. However, this ignores puzzling industry-level variation: India restricted FDI in auto manufacturing but allowed multinationals in oil, while Brazil welcomed foreign auto companies but prohibited FDI in oil. This book argues that FDI policies were shaped by contrasting colonial experiences that generated distinct economic nationalisms and patterns of industrialization in both countries. 

“Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India” (Harvard University Press, 2025)
By Jason Jackson, associate professor in political economy and urban planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Is foreign capital an agent of economic growth in developing countries or a vehicle of extraction? Examining how Indian elites wrestled with this question in the late colonial and postcolonial periods, Jackson argues that it reflects a false binary. Instead of simply choosing between domestic and foreign capital, Indian policymakers have long considered the business ethics of individual firms. Indian economic nationalism, in other words, has never been characterized by a straightforward preference for domestic over foreign capital.

“The Handbook of Social Protection: Evidence and New Directions for Low- and Middle-Income Countries” (MIT Press, 2026)
Edited by Benjamin A. Olken, the TEPCO Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, and Rema Hanna

Over the past several decades, social protection programs that provide financial assistance to the poor and insure against shocks for the vulnerable have become widespread in low- and middle-income countries. These programs can play a critical role in society. This book provides an overview of what we know about the differing aspects of social protection and highlights the open questions for research for the future. 

“Argumentation: The Key Concepts” (Routledge, 2026)
By Edward Schiappa, the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing

In this book, Schiappa delves into the identification and analysis of fallacies, the evaluation of evidence, and the crucial roles of context, audience adaptation, and argumentative style. It explores the ethical dimensions of argument, the impact of cognitive bias, and the influence of cultural and discourse communities.

“American Independence in verse” (Pentameter Press, 2025)
By Brad Skow, the Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

“American Independence in verse,” published by Pentameter Press, traces a story of America’s origins through a collection of vignettes featuring some well-known characters, like politician and orator Patrick Henry, alongside some lesser-known but no less important ones, like royalist and former chief justice of North Carolina Martin Howard. Each is rendered in blank verse, a nursery-style rhyme, or free verse.

“Rwanda’s Genocide Heritage: Between Justice and Sovereignty” (Duke University Press, 2025)
By Delia Wendel, associate professor of urban studies and international development in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Drawing from oral histories and a visual archive of memory work after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Wendel explores the human rights and government priorities that preserved killing sites and victims’ remains for public display. Rwanda’s genocide memorials exemplify a global phenomenon that Wendel terms “trauma heritage,” wherein hidden or unrecognized violence is made visible in public space to demand justice and recognition. Wendel argues that trauma heritage innovates on the form histories take by “writing” them into landscapes, constituting a reparative historiography from the Global South. 

Technology and society 

“Computing in the Age of Decolonization: India’s Lost Technological Revolution” (Princeton University Press, 2026)
By Dwaipayan Banerjee, associate professor of science, technology, and society

In this book, Banerjee examines India’s pursuit of technological self-sufficiency, and the global forces that prevailed against this vision. He describes why the nation is “the world’s leading provider of inexpensive outsourcing and offshoring services, yet enjoys minimal benefits from more profitable advances in research, manufacturing, and development.”

“Auditing AI” (MIT Press, 2026)
By Karrie G. Karahalios, professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab; Marc Aidinoff PhD ’22; Nathan Matias SM ’13, PhD ’17; Christian Sandvig; Alondra Nelson; Kristen Vaccaro; Esha Bhandari; Ellery Roberts Biddle; Lena Armstrong; Motahhare Eslami; and Danaé Metaxa

This book serves as a first-of-its-kind roadmap for auditing artificial intelligence systems to prevent decision-making failures in health care, policing, and employment. Using canonical examples of AI gone wrong — from misidentified facial recognition to biased hiring algorithms — this book explains why robust audits are essential and how they drive concrete policy and corporate change.

“Shape Computation: Fifty Years, 1972-2022” (Springer Nature, 2025)
Edited by Sotirios Kotsopoulos SM ’00, PhD ’05, a research affiliate in the Department of Architecture, with a chapter by Terry W. Knight, the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Design and Computation in the Department of Architecture

This book provides a panorama of “shape computation” and “shape grammars,” a computational theory that has, from its inception 50 years ago, been directed toward the “how” of design. Knight’s chapter, “How is that? Computing the Temporality of Drawing,” describes how process and time are key to studying, appreciating, designing, and making things. She notes that in creative production it is not only important to ask, “What is that?” but also “How is that?” — in other words, how did or how can a thing come to be? As a process carried out over time, computation offers a means for rethinking, representing, and elevating the “how” in designing and making activities. 

“The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft” (Cornell University Press, 2025)
By Erik Lin-Greenberg, associate professor in the Department of Political Science

In “The Remote Revolution,” Erik Lin-Greenberg shows that drones are rewriting the rules of international security — but not in ways one would expect. Leveraging diverse types of evidence from original wargames, survey experiments, and cases of U.S. and Israeli drone operations, Lin-Greenberg explores how drone operations lower risks of escalation. 

“The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence” (Stanford University Press, 2025)
By Benjamin Mangrum, associate professor of literature

We often deal with our doubts and fears about computing through humor, whether reconciling ourselves to machines or critiquing them. In fact, this dynamic turns up throughout modern culture, in movies, television, fiction, and the theater. Mangrum analyzes this phenomenon in “The Comedy of Computation,” digging into several facets of modern culture and technology.

“Rubrique Technologie / Tech Section” (Printed Matter, 2026)
By Nick Montfort, professor of digital media in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and Patsy Baudoin

This work is based on a text generator that produces French and English news items that imagine some of the ways technology will impact us in the near future. Most of the generated news involves people getting struck by autonomous vehicles or even aircraft. Others describe labor disputes, hostile takeover attempts, inventions, and the termination of online services. What is imagined in “RT/TS” is not apocalyptic or discontinuous but actually features many of the same problems we face today; the methods of producing the texts are today’s as well.

“Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age of AI” (MIT Press, 2025)
By Alex “Sandy” Pentland, the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and professor of information technology in the MIT Media Lab

How can we build a flourishing society by using human nature to design technology rather than letting technology shape society? Pentland explores how cultural inventions — from civilizations to the Enlightenment — accelerated innovation and collective wisdom. He argues that understanding these key factors in cultural evolution is essential for solving global challenges like climate change and pandemics, and shows how AI and digital media can aid rather than replace human deliberation.

“Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared Prosperity” (MIT Press, 2026)
Edited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds, professor of the practice of urban studies and planning, with a foreword by Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship and professor of global economics and management

A new world order is emerging, and within it, U.S. priorities are shifting. For the country to flourish as well as defend and secure its interests, it must build on its decades of experience in developing frontier technologies and globally competitive industries through investments into priority technologies for the 21st century. This volume presents an introduction to some of the key areas where the U.S. must lead in order to ensure both national and economic security: critical minerals, semiconductors, biomanufacturing, quantum computing, drones, and advanced manufacturing.

Education, work, finance, and social impact

“The Meritocracy Paradox: Where Talent Management Strategies Go Wrong and How to Fix Them” (Columbia University Press, 2025)
By Emilio J. Castilla, the NTU Professor of Management and professor of work and organization studies in the MIT Sloan School of Management

Organizations often hail meritocracy as a fair and efficient way to identify, advance, and reward talent. But efforts to create a level playing field can be held back by talent management systems that confer rewards based on individual performance evaluations. In practice, these merit-based systems “may actually reinforce or create advantages for certain groups,” Castilla contends.

“The Art of Monetary Policy: Lessons from Sun Tzu for Central Banks” (MIT Press, 2026)
By Kristin J. Forbes, the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and professor of global economics and management in the MIT Sloan School of Management

Central banks are navigating a world of higher debt, tightly interconnected markets, and rising geopolitical tensions. How might they respond effectively? In “The Art of Monetary Policy,” Forbes draws on the writings of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu to suggest modern principles for central banks, including preparing for the next financial battle, establishing a strong tactical position, combining weapons and methods, and modifying and varying tactics to maintain flexibility.

“Launching from the Lab: Building a Deep-Tech Startup” (MIT Press, 2026)
By Lita Nelsen, former director of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, and Maureen Stancik Boyce, mentor for the MIT Sandbox program

“Launching from the Lab” provides a much-needed framework for new entrepreneurs who are founding companies based on “deep technology” — groundbreaking innovations rising from new discoveries in fundamental research. Nelsen and Stancik Boyce cover the steps to launch and fund such companies, beginning with emergence from the laboratory and acquiring intellectual property through the intensive research of customer needs, building a team, and raising capital.

“There’s Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work” (Hachette, 2025)
By Nelson Repenning, professor of management, and Donald Kieffer

The chaos of everyday business forces people into an exhausting, ineffective, seemingly never-ending cycle of work-arounds, firefighting, and Whac-a-Mole. The irritatingly urgent crowds out the lastingly important. In this book, Repenning and Kieffer describe the game-changing discipline of dynamic work design, which improves productivity, reduces costs, and increases efficiency, ensuring that all parts of a company can work in concert.

“Bayesian Entrepreneurship” (MIT Press, 2026)
Edited by Erin L. Scott, senior lecturer of technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management in the MIT Sloan School of Management; and Scott Stern, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology and professor of technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management at MIT Sloan

This edited volume introduces and explores the concept of Bayesian entrepreneurship, a novel framework for understanding entrepreneurial decision-making under uncertainty. It brings together contributions from leading scholars to examine how entrepreneurs form beliefs about opportunities, learn through experimentation, and make strategic decisions.

“Disciplined Entrepreneurship for Climate and Energy Ventures: 24 Steps to Build Solutions for People and the Planet” (Wiley, 2025)
By Ben Soltoff, entrepreneur in residence at MIT Sloan; Bill Aulet, Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice; Tod Hynes, senior lecturer of climate and energy ventures; Francis O’Sullivan, senior lecturer in technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management; and Libby Wayman, senior lecturer of climate and energy ventures

Climate and energy entrepreneurs face challenges that traditional startup playbooks don’t address. Their ventures can require massive capital and take years to reach market, all while striving to achieve a positive impact on people, planet, and profit. This book adapts the MIT-born “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” framework specifically for climate and energy ventures, recognizing that founders in this space need their own approach.

Arts and design, architecture, urban studies and planning

“Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City” (W.W. Norton, 2026)
By Kate Brown, the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in History of Science

Nurturing health, hope, and community, gardeners in cities and suburbs are reclaiming lost commons, transforming vacant lots into vibrant plots, turning waste into compost, and recreating what was once the most productive agriculture in recorded human history. In a book with global scope, ranging from Estonia to Amsterdam and Washington, Brown contends that urban gardening has many positive spillover effects, from health and environmental benefits to community-building — apart from periods of pushback when others are trying to eliminate it.

“Small-Town Renaissance: Bridging Technology, Heritage, and Planning in Shrinking Italy” (Springer Nature, 2025)
Edited by Brent D. Ryan, vice provost and professor of urban design and public policy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Carmelo Ignaccolo PhD ’24; and Giovanna Fossa

This book explores the transformative power of digitization in rural regions — where technology isn’t just a tool, but a lifeline for local culture, economic resilience, and future development. Born from a unique research collaboration between the MIT and Politecnico di Milano, this book brings together scholarly work on shrinking towns, economic development, and digital innovation. The project tackled some of the most pressing challenges facing rural Italy — from population decline to economic stagnation — through the lens of digital transformation. 

“Blanking: An Annotated Archive of Projects and Thoughts on Architecture” (Park Books / University of Chicago Press, 2026)
By Rosalyn Shieh, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, and Troy Schaum

Based on the work and vision of their architecture firm Schaum/Shieh, this book shares what is said and what can be heard in a studio. So much of architectural thinking and knowledge is presented, formulated, and traded in spoken words: pinups, meetings, walkthroughs. Those exchanges inform this book, in which ideas and knowledge that are usually only spoken are made accessible to readers.

“Design Before Disaster: Japan’s Culture of Preparedness” (University of Virginia Press, 2026)
By Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor in the departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning

Few countries have faced as many environmental disasters as Japan, which has endured typhoons, cyclones, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. Japanese residents have responded to their precarious circumstances by developing a unique culture of disaster preparedness, equipping the island nation to plan for future emergencies and to greatly reduce their impact. Mazereeuw offers a detailed framework to design and prepare for anticipated disasters and describes effective interventions in urban landscape and architecture. 

“Reconstruction as Violence in Assad’s Syria” (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
Edited by Nasser Rabbat, professor of architecture and director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, and Deen Sharp, with a foreword by Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning

This book delves into the complex interplay of post-conflict reconstruction in Syria, challenging the traditionally held dichotomy between the end of violence and the commencement of rebuilding. The contributors to this volume — architects, urbanists, geographers, and historians — employ critical concepts such as urbicide, domicide, and “civilian crisis architecture” to argue against the conventional theoretical frameworks that support a neat separation of phases.

This is a fascinating explotation of how LLMs fall for prompt injection attacks. It turns out that they learn to recognize the style of text in different role/instruction blocks, and not just the tags.

Their conclusion:

Role tags were a formatting trick that became the security architecture and the cognitive scaffolding of modern LLMs. We’ve shown that this architecture doesn’t survive into the model’s actual representations, and that such role confusion is linked to prompt injection.

Unless LLMs achieve genuine role perception, we think injection defense will remain a perpetual whack-a-mole game. And the continuous nature of role boundaries opens the threat of injections designed to subtly shift LLM states through seemingly innocuous text, legally and at scale...

Solar power may drop in places like California and southeastern China, while hydropower dries up in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southern Africa.

State Sen. Ben Allen will face fellow Democrat Jane Kim in the November race for insurance commissioner.

The software company opposes a new regulation that would force large energy users to post financial commitments if their credit ratings are below a specified level.

Industry executives complained that the administration's frenetic approach to the war in Iran made it difficult to make long-term business decisions.