As 2021 comes to an end, it shatters the record for gun violence at K-12 schools in the United States. Shots were fired on school campuses 249 times, more than double 2018–2021, and 4–10 times more than years between 1970–2017. Unlike the planned attacks in 2018 at Parkland, FL, Santa…

News headlines across the country labeled the massacre in Boulder, CO as the nth ‘mass shooting’ to happen this year. While these headlines are commonplace, there is surprisingly little agreement on what a mass shooting is, or how many there have been. The Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Department of…

On the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency, simultaneous suicide bombings killed at least 32 people and injured 110 others in Iraq. ISIS claimed responsibility despite statements by the prior president that ISIS had been 100% defeated. The scale, coordination, and timing of the bombing demonstrates that ISIS is a…

General Perna, the military official running Operation Warp Speed, said yesterday that the “last mile” of vaccinating the American public against COVID is going slower than expected. We are not on the last mile of the race to vaccinate the public. We just passed the first mile marker by developing…

While the events of 2020 have shocked the general public, homeland security experts ‘imagined’ these threats including a global pandemic, mass civil unrest, cyberattacks, active shooters, and increasing severity of natural disasters from global climate change as part of the Homeland Security Advanced Thinking Program (HSx) almost 4 years ago. …

The United States is about three weeks away from distributing hundreds of thousands of doses of the new COVID vaccines. The logistics of the largest and fastest vaccination operation in human history are daunting. Our biggest challenge is that millions of Americans face above average risks from the virus, and…

Two years after launching the K-12 School Shooting Database in September 2018, the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School has completed an overhaul of the database’s public website. The update includes the addition of several new datapoints and an improved user interface allows for more…

Trust is essential to allow a democracy to function. We trust that when we cast a ballot, our vote will be reviewed and counted correctly. The ballot counter trusts that the person who filled out the ballot is a registered voter. We have no way of knowing if our ballot…

Update: Hawaii is experiencing increasing COVID rates due to poor planning, inconsistent enforcement of rules, lack of testing/monitoring of arriving visitors, and community spread through public gatherings. …