We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what's at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.

Imagine every post online came with a bounty of up to $150,000 paid to anyone who finds it violates opaque government rules—all out of the pocket of the platform. Smaller sites could be snuffed out, and big platforms would avoid crippling liability by aggressively blocking, taking down, and penalizing speech that even possibly violates these rules. In turn, users would self-censor, and opportunists would turn accusations into a profitable business.

This dystopia isn’t a fantasy, it’s close to how U.S. copyright’s broken statutory damages regime actually works.

Copyright includes "statutory damages,” which means letting a jury decide how big of a penalty the defendant will have to pay—anywhere from $200 to $150,000 per work—without the jury necessarily seeing any evidence of actual financial losses or illicit profits. In fact, the law gives judges and juries almost no guidelines on how to set damages. This is a huge problem for online speech.

One way or another, everyone builds on the speech of others when expressing themselves online: quoting posts, reposting memes, sharing images from the news. For some users, re-use is central to their online expression: parodists, journalists, researchers, and artists use others’ words, sounds, and images as part of making something new every day. Both these users and the online platforms they rely on risk unpredictable, potentially devastating penalties if a copyright holder objects to some re-use and a court disagrees with the user’s well-intentioned efforts.

On Copyright Week, we like to talk about ways to improve copyright law. One of the most important would be to fix U.S. copyright’s broken statutory damages regime. In other areas of civil law, the courts have limited jury-awarded punitive damages so that they can’t be far higher than the amount of harm caused. Extremely large jury awards for fraud, for example, have been found to offend the Constitution’s Due Process Clause. But somehow, that’s not the case in copyright—some courts have ruled that Congress can set damages that are potentially hundreds of times greater than actual harm.

Massive, unpredictable damages awards for copyright infringement, such as a $222,000 penalty for sharing 24 music tracks online, are the fuel that drives overzealous or downright abusive takedowns of creative material from online platforms. Capricious and error-prone copyright enforcement bots, like YouTube’s Content ID, were created in part to avoid the threat of massive statutory damages against the platform. Those same damages create an ever-present bias in favor of major rightsholders and against innocent users in the platforms’ enforcement decisions. And they stop platforms from addressing the serious problems of careless and downright abusive copyright takedowns.

By turning litigation into a game of financial Russian roulette, statutory damages also discourage artistic and technological experimentation at the boundaries of fair use. None but the largest corporations can risk ruinous damages if a well-intentioned fair use crosses the fuzzy line into infringement.

“But wait”, you might say, “don’t legal protections like fair use and the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protect users and platforms?” They do—but the threat of statutory damages makes that protection brittle. Fair use allows for many important re-uses of copyrighted works without permission. But fair use is heavily dependent on circumstances and can sometimes be difficult to predict when copyright is applied to new uses. Even well-intentioned and well-resourced users avoid experimenting at the boundaries of fair use when the cost of a court disagreeing is so high and unpredictable.

Many reforms are possible. Congress could limit statutory damages to a multiple of actual harm. That would bring U.S. copyright in line with other countries, and with other civil laws like patent and antitrust. Congress could also make statutory damages unavailable in cases where the defendant has a good-faith claim of fair use, which would encourage creative experimentation. Fixing fair use would make many of the other problems in copyright law more easily solvable, and create a fairer system for creators and users alike.

Our thoughts are specified by our knowledge and plans, yet our cognition can also be fast and flexible in handling new information. How does the well-controlled and yet highly nimble nature of cognition emerge from the brain’s anatomy of billions of neurons and circuits? 

A study by researchers in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provides new evidence from tests in animals that the answer might be found within a theory called “spatial computing.”

First proposed in 2023 by Picower Professor Earl K. Miller and colleagues Mikael Lundqvist and Pawel Herman, spatial computing theory explains how neurons in the prefrontal cortex can be organized on the fly into a functional group capable of carrying out the information processing required by a cognitive task. Moreover, it allows for neurons to participate in multiple such groups, as years of experiments have shown that many prefrontal neurons can indeed participate in multiple tasks at once. 

The basic idea of the theory is that the brain recruits and organizes ad hoc “task forces” of neurons by using “alpha” and “beta” frequency brain waves (about 10-30Hz) to apply control signals to physical patches of the prefrontal cortex. Rather than having to rewire themselves into new physical circuits every time a new task must be done, the neurons in the patch instead process information by following the patterns of excitation and inhibition imposed by the waves.

Think of the alpha and beta frequency waves as stencils that shape when and where in the prefrontal cortex groups of neurons can take in or express information from the senses, Miller says. In that way, the waves represent the rules of the task and can organize how the neurons electrically “spike” to process the information content needed for the task.

“Cognition is all about large-scale neural self-organization,” says Miller, senior author of the paper in Current Biology and a faculty member in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. “Spatial computing explains how the brain does that.”

Testing five predictions

A theory is just an idea. In the study, lead author Zhen Chen and other current and former members of Miller’s lab put spatial computing to the test by examining whether five predictions it makes about neural activity and brain wave patterns were actually evident in measurements made in the prefrontal cortex of animals as they engaged in two working memory and one categorization tasks. Across the tasks there were distinct pieces of sensory information to process (e.g., “A blue square appeared on the screen followed by a green triangle”) and rules to follow (e.g., “When new shapes appear on the screen, do they match the shapes I saw before and appear in the same order?”)

The first two predictions were that alpha and beta waves should represent task controls and rules, while the spiking activity of neurons should represent the sensory inputs. When the researchers analyzed the brain wave and spiking readings gathered by the four electrode arrays implanted in the cortex, they found that indeed these predictions were true. Neural spikes, but not the alpha/beta waves, carried sensory information. While both spikes and the alpha/beta waves carried task information, it was strongest in the waves, and it peaked at times relevant to when rules were needed to carry out the tasks.

Notably, in the categorization task, the researchers purposely varied the level of abstraction to make categorization more or less cognitively difficult. The researchers saw that the greater the difficulty, the stronger the alpha/beta wave power was, further showing that it carries task rules.

The next two predictions were that alpha/beta would be spatially organized, and that when and where it was strong, the sensory information represented by spiking would be suppressed, but where and when it was weak, spiking would increase. These predictions also held true in the data. Under the electrodes, Chen, Miller, and the team could see distinct spatial patterns of higher or lower wave power, and where power was high, the sensory information in spiking was low, and vice versa.

Finally, if spatial computing is valid, the researchers predicted, then trial by trial, alpha/beta power and timing should accurately correlate with the animals’ performance. Sure enough, there were significant differences in the signals on trials where the animals performed the tasks correctly versus when they made mistakes. In particular, the measurements predicted mistakes due to messing up task rules versus sensory information. For instance, alpha/beta discrepancies pertained to the order in which stimuli appeared (first square then triangle) rather than the identity of the individual stimuli (square or triangle).

Compatible with findings in humans

By conducting this study with animals, the researchers were able to make direct measurements of individual neural spikes as well as brain waves, and in the paper, they note that other studies in humans report some similar findings. For instance, studies using noninvasive EEG and MEG brain wave readings show that humans use alpha oscillations to inhibit activity in task-irrelevant areas under top-down control, and that alpha oscillations appear to govern task-related activity in the prefrontal cortex.

While Miller says he finds the results of the new study, and their intersection with human studies, to be encouraging, he acknowledges that more evidence is still needed. For instance, his lab has shown that brain waves are typically not still (like a jump rope), but travel across areas of the brain. Spatial computing should account for that, he says.

In addition to Chen and Miller, the paper’s other authors are Scott Brincat, Mikael Lundqvist, Roman Loonis, and Melissa Warden.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research, The Freedom Together Foundation, and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory funded the study.

Gemstones like precious opal are beautiful to look at and deceivingly complex. As you look at such gems from different angles, you’ll see a variety of tints glisten, causing you to question what color the rock actually is. It’s iridescent thanks to something called structural color — microscopic structures that reflect light to produce radiant hues.

Structural color can be found across different organisms in nature, such as on the tails of peacocks and the wings of certain butterflies. Scientists and artists have been working to replicate this quality, but outside of the lab, it’s still very hard to recreate, causing a barrier to on-demand, customizable fabrication. Instead, companies and individual designers alike have resorted to adding existing color-changing objects like feathers and gems to things like personal items, clothes, and artwork.

Now MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers have replicated nature’s brilliance with a new optical system called “MorphoChrome.” MorphoChrome allows users to design and program iridescence onto everyday objects (like a glove, for example), augmenting them with the structurally colored multi-color glimmer reminiscent of many gemstones. You select particular colors from a color wheel in the team’s software program and use their handheld device to “paint” with multi-color light onto holographic film. Then, you apply that painted sheet to 3D-printed objects or flexible substrates such as fashion items, sporting goods, and other personal accessories, using their unique epoxy resin transfer process.

“We wanted to tap into the innate intelligence of nature,” says MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) PhD student and CSAIL researcher Paris Myers SM ’25, who is a lead author on a recent paper presenting MorphoChrome. “In the past, you couldn’t easily synthesize structural color yourself, but using pigments or dyes gave you full creative expression. With our system, you have full creative agency over this new material space, predictably programming iridescent designs in real-time.”

MorphoChrome showed it could add a luminous touch to things like a necklace charm of a butterfly. What started as a static, black accessory became a shiny pendant with green, orange, and blue glimmers, thanks to the system’s programmable color process. MorphoChrome also turned golfing gloves into beginner-friendly training equipment that shine green when you hold a golf club at the correct angle, and even helped one user adorn their fingernails with a gemstone-like look.

These multi-color displays are the result of a handheld fabrication process where MorphoChrome acts as a “brush" to paint with red-green-blue (RGB) laser light, while a holographic photopolymer film (used for things like passports and debit cards) is the canvas. Users first connect the system’s handheld device to a computer via a USB-C port, then open the software program. They can then click “send color” to rapidly transmit different hues from their laptop or home computer to the MorphoChrome hardware tool.

This handheld device transforms the colors on a screen into a controllable, multi-color RGB laser light output that instantly exposes the film, a sort of canvas where users can explore different combinations of hues. About the size of a glue bottle, MorphoChrome’s optical machine houses red, green, and blue lasers, which are activated at various intensities depending on the color chosen. These lights are reflected off mirrors toward an optical prism, where the colors mix and are promptly released as a single combined beam of light. 

After designing the film, one can fabricate diverse structurally colored objects by first coating a chosen object with a thin layer of epoxy resin. Next, the holographic film (litiholographics) — composed of a photopolymer layer and a protective plastic backing — is bonded to the object through a 20-second ultraviolet cure, essentially using a handheld UV light to transfer the colored design onto the surface. Finally, users peel off the film’s protective plastic sheet, revealing a color-changing, structurally-colored object that looks like a jewel. 

Do try this at home

MorphoChrome is surprisingly user-friendly, consisting of a straightforward fabrication blueprint and an easy-to-use device that encourages do-it-yourself designers and other makers to explore iridescent designs at home. Instead of spending time searching for hard-to-find artistic materials or chemically synthesizing structural color in the lab, users can focus on expressing various ideas and experimenting with programming different radiant color mixes.

The array of possible colors stems from intriguing fusions. Nagenta, for instance, is created after the system’s blue and red lasers mix. Selecting cyan on the MorphoChrome software’s color wheel will mix the green and blue lights.

Users should note that the time it takes to fully expose the film to each color will vary, based on the researchers’ multi-color findings and the intrinsic properties of holographic photopolymer film. MorphoChrome activates green in 2.5 seconds, whereas red takes about 3 seconds, and blue needs roughly 6 seconds to saturate. The reason for this discrepancy is that each color is a particular wavelength of light, requiring a certain level of light exposure (blue needing more than green or red).

Look at this hologram

MorphoChrome builds upon previous work on stretchable structural color by co-author Benjamin Miller PhD ’24, Professor Mathias Kolle, and Kolle’s Laboratory for Biologically Inspired Photonic Engineering group at MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. The CSAIL researchers, who work in the Human-Computer Interaction Engineering Group, say that MorphoChrome also advances their ongoing work on merging computation with unique materials to create dynamic, programmable color interfaces. 

Going forward, their goal is to push the capabilities of holographic structural color as a reprogrammable design and manufacturing space, empowering individuals and industries alike to customize iridescent and diffuse multi-color interfaces. “The polymer sheet we went with here is holographic, which has potential beyond what we’re showing here,” says co-author Yunyi Zhu ’20, MEng ’21, who is an MIT EECS PhD student and CSAIL researcher. “We’re working on adapting our process for creating entire 3D light fields in one film.”

Customizing full light-field holographic messages onto objects would allow users to encode information and 3D images. One could imagine, for example, that a passport could have a sticker that beams out a 3D green check mark. This hologram would signal its authenticity when viewed through a particular device or at a certain angle.

The team is also inspired by how animals use structural color as an adaptive communication channel and camouflage technique. Going forward, they are curious how programmable structural color could be integrated into different types of environments, perhaps as camouflage for soft robotic structures to blend into an environment. For instance, they imagine a robot studying jungle terrain may need to match the appearance of nearby bushes to collect data, with a human reprogramming the machine’s color from afar.

In the meantime, MorphoChrome recreates the majestic structural color found in various ecosystems, connecting a natural phenomenon with our creative processes. MIT researchers will look to improve the system’s color gamut and maximize how luminous mixed colors are. They’re also considering using another material for the device’s casing, since its current 3D-printing housing leaks out some light.

“Being able to easily create and manipulate structural color is a great new tool, and opens up new avenues for discovery and expression,” says Liti Holographics CEO Paul Christie SM ’97, who wasn’t involved in the research. “Simplifying the process to be more easily accessible allows for new applications to be developed in a wider range of areas, from art and jewelry to functional fabric.”

Myers, Zhu, and Miller wrote the paper with senior author Stefanie Mueller, who is an MIT associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and CSAIL principal investigator. Their research was supported by the National Science Foundation, and presented as a demo paper and poster at the 2025 ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication in November.

So many data breaches happen throughout the year that it can be pretty easy to gloss over not just if, but how many different breaches compromised your data. We're diving into these data breaches and more with our latest EFFector newsletter.

Since 1990, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberties, and the law. This latest issue tracks U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) surveillance spending spree, explains how hackers are countering ICE's surveillance, and invites you to our free livestream covering online age verification mandates.

Prefer to listen in? In our audio companion, EFF Security and Privacy Activist Thorin Klosowski explains what you can do to protect yourself from data breaches and how companies can better protect their users. Find the conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive.

LISTEN TO EFFECTOR

EFFECTOR 38.1 - 💾 THE WORST DATA BREACHES OF 2025—and what you can do

Want to stay in the fight for privacy and free speech online? Sign up for EFF's EFFector newsletter for updates, ways to take action, and new merch drops. You can also fuel the fight to protect people from these data breaches and unlawful surveillance when you support EFF today!

Earlier this month, Iran’s internet connectivity faced one of its most severe disruptions in recent years with a near-total shutdown from the global internet and major restrictions on mobile access.

EFF joined architects, operators, and stewards of the global internet infrastructure in calling upon authorities in Iran to immediately restore full and unfiltered internet access. We further call upon the international technical community to remain vigilant in monitoring connectivity and to support efforts that ensure the internet remains open, interoperable, and accessible to all.

This is not the first time the people in Iran have been forced to experience this, with the government suppressing internet access in the country for many years. In the past three years in particular, people of Iran have suffered repeated internet and social media blackouts following an activist movement that blossomed after the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman murdered in police custody for refusing to wear a hijab. The movement gained global attention and in response, the Iranian government rushed to control both the public narrative and organizing efforts by banning social media and sometimes cutting off internet access altogether. 

EFF has long maintained that governments and occupying powers must not disrupt internet or telecommunication access. Cutting off telecommunications and internet access is a violation of basic human rights and a direct attack on people's ability to access information and communicate with one another. 

Our joint statement continues:

“We assert the following principles:

1. Connectivity is a Fundamental Enabler of Human Rights: In the 21st century, the right to assemble, the right to speak, and the right to access information are inextricably linked to internet access.
2. Protecting the Global Internet Commons: National-scale shutdowns fragment the global network, undermining the stability and trust required for the internet to function as a global commons.
3. Transparency: The technical community condemns the use of BGP manipulation and infrastructure filtering to obscure events on the ground.”

Read the letter in full here. 

Eighteen months ago, it was plausible that artificial intelligence might take a different path than social media. Back then, AI’s development hadn’t consolidated under a small number of big tech firms. Nor had it capitalized on consumer attention, surveilling users and delivering ads.

Unfortunately, the AI industry is now taking a page from the social media playbook and has set its sights on monetizing consumer attention. When OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Search feature in late 2024 and its browser, ChatGPT Atlas, in October 2025, it kicked off a ...

The president’s move to withdraw from the U.N. framework convention is pushing the nation into a legal no-man’s land.

The administration’s arguments that offshore wind farms present a national security risk failed to convince judges in three separate courts.

Temperature goals aren't enough, some scientists say. Another metric could help highlight the real-world impacts of global warming.

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern say their merger would decrease emissions-heavy truck traffic. Rail shippers argue the opposite.

A yearlong interruption at the main suppliers of battery parts could reduce production by more than 580,000 electric vehicles.

The CEO of the California Community Foundation spoke about the challenges facing survivors and the future of Los Angeles' recovery.

The weakening could change the big fishes’ status at the top of the ocean’s food chain, scientists wrote.

The fish threaten to decimate indigenous fish stocks, wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of the roughly 150 professional fishermen in Cyprus.

Over the years, passing spacecraft have observed mystifying weather patterns at the poles of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets host very different types of polar vortices, which are huge atmospheric whirlpools that rotate over a planet’s polar region. On Saturn, a single massive polar vortex appears to cap the north pole in a curiously hexagonal shape, while on Jupiter, a central polar vortex is surrounded by eight smaller vortices, like a pan of swirling cinnamon rolls.

Given that both planets are similar in many ways — they are roughly the same size and made from the same gaseous elements — the stark difference in their polar weather patterns has been a longstanding mystery.

Now, MIT scientists have identified a possible explanation for how the two different systems may have evolved. Their findings could help scientists understand not only the planets’ surface weather patterns, but also what might lie beneath the clouds, deep within their interiors.

In a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team simulates various ways in which well-organized vortex patterns may form out of random stimulations on a gas giant. A gas giant is a large planet that is made mostly of gaseous elements, such as Jupiter and Saturn. Among a wide range of plausible planetary configurations, the team found that, in some cases, the currents coalesced into a single large vortex, similar to Saturn’s pattern, whereas other simulations produced multiple large circulations, akin to Jupiter’s vortices.

After comparing simulations, the team found that vortex patterns, and whether a planet develops one or multiple polar vortices, comes down to one main property: the “softness” of a vortex’s base, which is related to the interior composition. The scientists liken an individual vortex to a whirling cylinder spinning through a planet’s many atmospheric layers. When the base of this swirling cylinder is made of softer, lighter materials, any vortex that evolves can only grow so large. The final pattern can then allow for multiple smaller vortices, similar to those on Jupiter. In contrast, if a vortex’s base is made of harder, denser stuff, it can grow much larger and subsequently engulf other vortices to form one single, massive vortex, akin to the monster cyclone on Saturn.

“Our study shows that, depending on the interior properties and the softness of the bottom of the vortex, this will influence the kind of fluid pattern you observe at the surface,” says study author Wanying Kang, assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “I don’t think anyone’s made this connection between the surface fluid pattern and the interior properties of these planets. One possible scenario could be that Saturn has a harder bottom than Jupiter.”

The study’s first author is MIT graduate student Jiaru Shi.

Spinning up

Kang and Shi’s new work was inspired by images of Jupiter and Saturn that have been taken by the Juno and Cassini missions. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been orbiting around Jupiter since 2016, and has captured stunning images of the planet’s north pole and its multiple swirling vortices. From these images, scientists have estimated that each of Jupiter’s vortices is immense, spanning about 3,000 miles across — almost half as wide as the Earth itself.

The Cassini spacecraft, prior to intentionally burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017, orbited the ringed planet for 13 years. Its observations of Saturn’s north pole recorded a single, hexagonal-shaped polar vortex, about 18,000 miles wide.

“People have spent a lot of time deciphering the differences between Jupiter and Saturn,” Shi says. “The planets are about the same size and are both made mostly of hydrogen and helium. It’s unclear why their polar vortices are so different.”

Shi and Kang set out to identify a physical mechanism that would explain why one planet might evolve a single vortex, while the other hosts multiple vortices. To do so, they worked with a two-dimensional model of surface fluid dynamics. While a polar vortex is three-dimensional in nature, the team reasoned that they could accurately represent vortex evolution in two dimensions, as the fast rotation of Jupiter and Saturn enforces uniform motion along the rotating axis.

“In a fast-rotating system, fluid motion tends to be uniform along the rotating axis,” Kang explains. “So, we were motivated by this idea that we can reduce a 3D dynamical problem to a 2D problem because the fluid pattern does not change in 3D. This makes the problem hundreds of times faster and cheaper to simulate and study.”

Getting to the bottom

Following this reasoning, the team developed a two-dimensional model of vortex evolution on a gas giant, based on an existing equation that describes how swirling fluid evolves over time.

“This equation has been used in many contexts, including to model midlatitude cyclones on Earth,” Kang says. “We adapted the equation to the polar regions of Jupiter and Saturn.”

The team applied their two-dimensional model to simulate how fluid would evolve over time on a gas giant under different scenarios. In each scenario, the team varied the planet’s size, its rate of rotation, its internal heating, and the softness or hardness of the rotating fluid, among other parameters. They then set a random “noise” condition, in which fluid initially flowed in random patterns across the planet’s surface. Finally, they observed how the fluid evolved over time given the scenario’s specific conditions.

Over multiple different simulations, they observed that some scenarios evolved to form a single large polar vortex, like Saturn, whereas others formed multiple smaller vortices, like Jupiter. After analyzing the combinations of parameters and variables in each scenario and how they related to the final outcome, they landed on a single mechanism to explain whether a single or multiple vortices evolve: As random fluid motions start to coalesce into individual vortices, the size to which a vortex can grow is limited by how soft the bottom of the vortex is. The softer, or lighter the gas is that is rotating at the bottom of a vortex, the smaller the vortex is in the end, allowing for multiple smaller-scale vortices to coexist at a planet’s pole, similar to those on Jupiter.

Conversely, the harder or denser a vortex bottom is, the larger the system can grow, to a size where eventually it can follow the planet’s curvature as a single, planetary-scale vortex, like the one on Saturn.

If this mechanism is indeed what is at play on both gas giants, it would suggest that Jupiter could be made of softer, lighter material, while Saturn may harbor heavier stuff in its interior.

“What we see from the surface, the fluid pattern on Jupiter and Saturn, may tell us something about the interior, like how soft the bottom is,” Shi says. “And that is important because maybe beneath Saturn’s surface, the interior is more metal-enriched and has more condensable material which allows it to provide stronger stratification than Jupiter. ”

"Because Jupiter and Saturn are otherwise so similar, their different polar weather has been a puzzle,” says Yohai Kaspi, a professor of geophysical fluid dynamics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and a member of the Juno mission’s science team, who was not involved in the new study. “The work by Shi and Kang reveals a surprising link between these differences and the planets’ deep interior ‘softness’, offering a new way to map the key internal properties that shape their atmospheres."

This research was supported, in part, by a Mathworks Fellowship and endowed funding from MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

It all sounds pretty dystopian:

Inside a white stucco building in Southern California, video cameras compare faces of passersby against a facial recognition database. Behavioral analysis AI reviews the footage for signs of violent behavior. Behind a bathroom door, a smoke detector-shaped device captures audio, listening for sounds of distress. Outside, drones stand ready to be deployed and provide intel from above, and license plate readers from $8.5 billion surveillance behemoth Flock Safety ensure the cars entering and exiting the parking lot aren’t driven by criminals...

“I went into the military right after high school, mostly because I didn’t really see the value of academics,” says Air Force veteran and MIT sophomore Justin Cole.

His perspective on education shifted, however, after he experienced several natural disasters during his nine years of service. As a satellite systems operator in Colorado, Cole volunteered in the aftermath of the 2013 Black Forest fire, the state’s most destructive fire at the time. And in 2018, while he was leading a team in Okinawa conducting signal-monitoring work on communications satellites, two Category 5 typhoons barreled through the area within 26 days.

“I realized, this climate stuff is really a prerequisite to national security objectives in almost every sense, so I knew that school was going to be the thing that would help prepare me to make a difference,” he says. In 2023, after leaving the Air Force to work for climate-focused nonprofits and take engineering courses, Cole participated in an intense, weeklong STEM boot camp at MIT. “It definitely reaffirmed that I wanted to continue down the path of at least getting a bachelor’s, and it also inspired me to apply to MIT,” he says. He transferred in 2024 and is majoring in climate system science and engineering.

“It’s a lot like the MIT experience”

MIT runs the boot camp every summer as part of the nonprofit Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP), which started at Yale University in 2012. WSP offers a range of programming designed to help enlisted veterans and service members transition from the military to higher education. The academic boot camp program, which aims to simulate a week of undergraduate life, is offered at 19 schools nationwide in three areas: business, college readiness, and STEM.

MIT joined WSP in 2017 as one of the first three campuses to offer the STEM boot camp. “It was definitely rigorous,” Cole recalls, “not getting tons of sleep, grinding psets at night with friends … it’s a lot like the MIT experience.” In addition to problem sets, every day at MIT-WSP is packed with faculty lectures on math and physics, recitations, working on research projects, and tours of MIT campus labs. Scholars also attend daily college success workshops on topics such as note taking, time management, and applying to college. The schedule is meticulously mapped out — including travel times — from 0845 to 2200, Sunday through Friday.

Michael McDonald, an associate professor of physics at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and Navy veteran Nelson Olivier MBA ’17 have run the MIT-WSP program since its inception. At the time, WSP wanted to expand its STEM boot camps to other universities, so a Yale astrophysicist colleague recruited McDonald. Meanwhile, Olivier’s former Navy SEAL Team THREE teammate — who happened to be the WSP CEO — convinced Olivier to help launch the program while he was at the MIT Sloan School of Management, along with classmate Bill Kindred MBA ’17.

Now in its 10th year, MIT-WSP has hosted over 120 scholars, 93 percent of whom have gone on to attend schools like Stanford University, Georgetown University, University of Notre Dame, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley. MIT-WSP alumni who have graduated now work at employers such as Meta, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Boeing, and BAE Systems.

Translating helicopter repairs to Newton’s laws

McDonald has a lot of fun teaching WSP scholars every summer. “When I pose a question to my first-year physics class in September, no one wants to meet my eyes or raise their hand for fear of embarrassing themselves,” he says. “But I ask a question to this group of, say, 12 vets, and 12 hands shoot up, they are all answering over each other, and then asking questions to follow up on the question. They are just curious and hungry, and they couldn’t care less about how they come off. … As a professor, it’s like your dream class.”

Every year, McDonald witnesses a predictable transformation among the scholars. They start off eager enough, however “by Tuesday, they are miserable, they’re pretty beaten down. But by the end of the week, they’re like, ‘I could do another week,’” he says.

Their confidence grows as they recognize that, while they may not have taken college courses, their military experience is invaluable. “It’s just a matter of convincing these guys that what they are already doing is what we are looking for. We have guys that say, ‘I don’t know if I can succeed in an engineering program,’ but then in the field, they are repairing helicopters. And I’m like, ‘Oh no, you can do this stuff!’ They just need to understand the background of why that helicopter that they are building works.”

Olivier agrees. “The enlisted veteran has a leg up because they’ve already done this before. They are just translating it from either fixing a radio or messing around with the components of a bomb to understanding Newton’s laws. That’s a thing of beauty, when you see that.”

Fostering a virtuous cycle

While just seeing themselves succeed at MIT-WSP helps instill confidence among scholars, meeting veterans who have made the leap into academia has a multiplier effect. To that end, the WSP organization provides each academic boot camp with alumni, called fellows, to teach college success workshops, provide support, and share their experiences in higher education.

“When I was at boot camp, we had two WSP fellows who were at Columbia, one at Princeton, and one who just got accepted to Harvard,” Cole recalls. “Just seeing people existing at these institutions made me realize, this is a thing that is doable.” The following summer, he became a fellow as well.

Former Marine Corps communications operator Aaron Kahler, who attended MIT-WSP in 2024, particularly recalls meeting a veteran PhD student while the group toured the neuroscience facility. “It was really cool seeing instances of successful vets doing their thing at MIT,” he says. “There were a lot more than we thought.”

Over the years, McDonald has made an effort to recruit more MIT veterans to staff the program. One of them is Andrea Henshall, a retired major in the Air Force and a PhD student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. After joining the Ask Me Anything panel a few years ago, she’s become increasingly involved, presenting lectures, mentoring participants, offering tours of the motion capture lab where she conducts experiments, and informally mentoring scholars.

“It’s so inspiring to hear so many students at the end of the week say, ‘I never considered a place like MIT until the boot camp, or until somebody told me, hey, you can be here, too.’ Or they see examples of enlisted veterans, like Justin, who’ve transitioned to a place like MIT and shown that it’s possible,” says Henshall.

At the conclusion of MIT-WSP, scholars receive a tangible reminder of what’s possible: a challenge coin designed by Olivier and McDonald. “In the military, the challenge coin usually has the emblem of the unit and symbolizes the ethos of the unit,” Olivier explains. On one side of the MIT-WSP coin are Newton’s laws of motion, superimposed over the WSP logo. MIT's “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”) motto appears on the other side, beneath an image of the Great Dome inscribed with the scholar’s name.

“As you go into Killian Court you see all the names of Pasteur, Newton, et cetera, but Building 10 doesn’t have a name on it,” he says. “So we say, ‘earn your space there on these buildings. Do something significant that will impact the human experience.’ And that’s what we think each one of these guys and gals can do.”

Kahler keeps the coin displayed on his desk at MIT, where he’s now a first-year student, for inspiration. “I don’t think I would be here if it weren’t for the Warrior-Scholar Project,” he says.

Government invasion of a reporter’s home, and seizure of journalistic materials, is exactly the kind of abuse of power the First Amendment is designed to prevent. It represents the most extreme form of press intimidation. 

Yet, that’s what happened on Wednesday morning to Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, when the FBI searched her Virginia home and took her phone, two laptops, and a Garmin watch. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has joined 30 other press freedom and civil liberties organizations in condemning the FBI’s actions against Natanson. The First Amendment exists precisely to prevent the government from using its powers to punish or deter reporting on matters of public interest—including coverage of leaked or sensitive information. Searches like this threaten not only journalists, but the public’s right to know what its government is doing.

In the statement published yesterday, we call on Congress: 

To exercise oversight of the DOJ by calling Attorney General Pam Bondi before Congress to answer questions about the FBI’s actions; 

To reintroduce and pass the PRESS Act, which would limit government surveillance of journalists, and its ability to compel journalists to reveal sources; 

To reform the 108-year-old Espionage Act so it can no longer be used to intimidate and attack journalists. 

And to pass a resolution confirming that the recording of law enforcement activity is protected by the First Amendment. 

We’re joined on this letter by Free Press Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, PEN America, the NewsGuild-CWA, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and many other press freedom and civil liberties groups.

Further Reading:

•   Joint Statement of Press Freedom Groups Condemning FBI Actions

EFF asked a California appeals court to uphold a lower court’s decision to strike a tech CEO’s lawsuit against a journalist that sought to silence reporting the CEO, Maury Blackman, didn’t like.

The journalist, Jack Poulson, reported on Maury Blackman’s arrest for felony domestic violence after receiving a copy of the arrest report from a confidential source. Blackman didn’t like that. So, he sued Poulson—along with Substack, Amazon Web Services, and Poulson’s non-profit, Tech Inquiry—to try and force Poulson to take his articles down from the internet.

Fortunately, the trial court saw this case for what it was: a classic SLAPP, or a strategic lawsuit against public participation. The court dismissed the entire complaint under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which provides a way for defendants to swiftly defeat baseless claims designed to chill their free speech.

The appeals court should affirm the trial court’s correct decision.  

Poulson’s reporting is just the kind of activity that the state’s anti-SLAPP law was designed to protect: truthful speech about a matter of public interest. The felony domestic violence arrest of the CEO of a controversial surveillance company with U.S. military contracts is undoubtedly a matter of public interest. As we explained to the court, “the public has a clear interest in knowing about the people their government is doing business with.”

Blackman’s claims are totally meritless, because they are barred by the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects Poulson’s right to publish and report on the incident report. Blackman argues that a court order sealing the arrest overrides Poulson’s right to report the news—despite decades of Supreme Court and California Court of Appeals precedent to the contrary. The trial correctly rejected this argument and found that the First Amendment defeats all of Blackman’s claims. As the trial court explained, “the First Amendment’s protections for the publication of truthful speech concerning matters of public interest vitiate Blackman’s merits showing.”

The court of appeals should reach the same conclusion.

Related Cases: Blackman v. Substack, et al.

The Baton Rouge Police Department announced this week that it will begin using a drone designed by military equipment manufacturer Lockheed Martin and Edge Autonomy, making it one of the first local police departments to use an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a history of primary use in foreign war zones. Baton Rouge is now one of the first local police departments in the United States to deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with such extensive surveillance capabilities — a dangerous escalation in the militarization of local law enforcement.

This is a troubling development in an already long history of local law enforcement acquiring and utilizing military-grade surveillance equipment. It should be a cautionary tale that prods  communities across the country to be proactive in ensuring that drones can only be acquired and used in ways that are well-documented, transparent, and subject to public feedback. 

Baton Rouge bought the Stalker VXE30 from Edge Autonomy, which partners with Lockheed Martin and began operating under the brand Redwire this week. According to reporting from WBRZ ABC2 in Louisiana, the drone, training, and batteries, cost about $1 million. 

Baton Rouge Police Department with Stalker VXE30 drone Baton Rouge Police Department officers stand with the Stalker VXE30 drone in a photo shared by the BRPD via Facebook.

All of the regular concerns surrounding drones apply to this new one in use by Baton Rouge:

• Drones can access and view spaces that are otherwise off-limits to law enforcement, including backyards, decks, and other areas of personal property.
• Footage captured by camera-enabled drones may be stored and shared in ways that go far beyond the initial flight.
• Additional camera-based surveillance can be installed on the drone, including automated license plate readers and the retroactive application of biometric analysis, such as face recognition.

However, the use of a military-grade drone hypercharges these concerns. Stalker VXE30's surveillance capabilities extend for dozens of miles, and it can fly faster and longer than standard police drones already in use. 

“It can be miles away, but we can still have a camera looking at your face, so we can use it for surveillance operations," BRPD Police Chief TJ Morse told reporters.

Drone models similar to the Stalker VXE30 have been used in military operations around the world and are currently being used by the U.S. Army and other branches for long-range reconnaissance. Typically, police departments deploy drone models similar to those commercially available from companies like DJI, which until recently was the subject of a proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ban, or devices provided by police technology companies like Skydio, in partnership with Axon and Flock Safety. 

Additionally troubling is the capacity to add additional equipment to these drones: so-called “payloads” that could include other types of surveillance equipment and even weapons. 

The Baton Rouge community must put policies in place that restrict and provide oversight of any possible uses of this drone, as well as any potential additions law enforcement might make. 

EFF has filed a public records request to learn more about the conditions of this acquisition and gaps in oversight policies. We've been tracking the expansion of police drone surveillance for years, and this acquisition represents a dangerous new frontier. We'll continue investigating and supporting communities fighting back against the militarization of local police and mass surveillance. To learn more about the surveillance technologies being used in your city, please check out the Atlas of Surveillance.