Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Daniel P. Aldrich, Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University

Social isolation kills. It increases your risk of death by 30% — roughly the same as smoking cigarettes and much worse than factors such as obesity and sedentary living.

Americans are living through what researchers call a friendship recession, spending less time with friends than at any point in recent history.

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic. Deaths from factors like suicide, addiction and alcoholism, referred to as deaths of despair, continue climbing.

While doctors routinely check patients’ blood pressure and ask about exercise habits, they rarely assess social health.

Public health guidelines urge Americans to eat their vegetables, exercise for 150 minutes weekly, sleep seven to nine hours nightly and drink less than one or two alcoholic beverages per day. But few public health bodies have addressed social connection — until now.

As scholars who focus on public policy and social determinants of health and well-being, we are part of an international team of more than 100 experts who undertook the first systematic effort to develop evidence-based guidelines for social connection.

These guidelines, which are now publicly available, aim to do more than offer advice. Elements of them are already being embedded into policies in the Netherlands and the U.K.

Our hope is that the guidelines can elevate the importance of social connection to the same level as basic public health practices such as exercising, not smoking and relying on a designated driver when you go out drinking with friends.

The value of guidelines

Research has shown for decades that social connection is crucial for good health. The World Health Organization’s constitution, adopted in 1946, defines health as “complete physical, mental and social well-being.”

Codifying different dimensions of health into evidence-based guidelines matters because guidelines allow people to put recommendations into action. Nutrition labels help people understand what they’re eating. Exercise recommendations help people know how much movement protects their health. Blood pressure cutoffs tell both patients and clinicians when it’s time to intervene.

Guidelines also shape systems in ways people feel every day. Exercise guidelines, for example, helped motivate cities to invest in walkable streets and bike lanes, workplaces to design wellness programs, and schools to include physical activity in curricula.

Social health guidelines can play a similar role.

Standardized metrics for social well-being can help health care providers identify when someone is socially isolated, enable employers to design workplaces that foster connection, and give schools and cities clearer targets for building socially supportive environments.

They also lay the groundwork for “social prescriptions” — structured ways to connect people with community programs or group activities — which some health care systems are already beginning to test.

The science of connection

Beginning in the summer of 2023, our team spent more than two years developing a set of international guidelines for social health by drawing on more than 40 plain-language evidence summaries, numerous case studies, conversations with marginalized communities, and extensive consultation with global experts.

What we found highlights several foundational principles of social well-being.

First, there are no universal rules for social health. There is no magic number of friends or ideal number of weekly social hours. Social needs vary widely. Both introverts and extroverts need connection, but they meet that need differently. A new parent’s social world is completely unlike a retiree’s. And quality trumps quantity: One meaningful conversation can be more nourishing than a dozen quick exchanges.

Second, technology is not the villain it’s often made out to be. Passive scrolling can harm well-being, but active, intentional use can strengthen bonds — whether through video calls with distant family, group chats that sustain friendships or apps that help neighbors organize local meetups. The key is using technology to facilitate real connection rather than replace it.

Third, relationships are shaped as much by systems as by individuals. Social health isn’t just about personal effort. It emerges from local environments that make connection possible. Research shows that investments in social infrastructure – the places and spaces where we connect, such as libraries, parks and cafes – measurably improve well-being. And communities that have denser concentrations of such spaces have better health outcomes after disasters.

Finally, diverse networks matter. Strong social health includes both close relationships and “weak ties” — acquaintances, neighbors, local business staff and others you see in passing. These lighter-touch interactions offer meaningful benefits: the barista who remembers your order, a colleague you exchange a few words with, a fellow dog walker along your route.

Studies show that weak ties provide novel information, unexpected opportunities and a broader sense of belonging that close friends alone can’t provide. A mix of ties — deep and shallow — forms the basis of a socially healthy life.

From research to reality

Forward-thinking institutions are already experimenting with principles that underpin our guidelines.

Some workplaces now assess social health when making decisions about policies such as remote work or office layout, recognizing that communication norms and physical design shape how employees connect. Schools are teaching emotional intelligence and friendship skills as core curriculum, not extras. Cities are investing in social infrastructure — community centers, shared public spaces and plazas — that naturally bring people together.

On a personal level, the guidelines suggest a few simple shifts:

• Prioritize face-to-face time. Even short, in-person interactions boost mood, reduce stress and build trust.

• Use technology actively, not passively. Reach out to someone, schedule a video call or use apps to create opportunities for connection — not just to scroll.

• Treat solitude as restoration, not failure. Healthy social lives include both meaningful interaction and the downtime needed to recharge.

• Build routines that create natural interaction. Walk the same route daily, become a regular at neighborhood spots or join recurring community activities to create predictable opportunities for connection.

• And most importantly, take initiative. In a culture that treats socializing as a luxury, prioritizing connection is quietly radical.

Kiffer George Card receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Health Research BC. He is also an affiliate of Social Health Canada and the GenWell Project.

Daniel P. Aldrich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We created health guidelines for fighting loneliness – here’s what we recommend – https://theconversation.com/we-created-health-guidelines-for-fighting-loneliness-heres-what-we-recommend-268560

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Amy Wrobleski, Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology and Anthropology, Penn State

Like many mushroom harvesters, I got interested in foraging for fungi during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I had been preparing for a summer of field work studying foraged desert plants in a remote part of Australia when the pandemic hit, and my travel plans were abruptly frozen. It was March, right before morel mushrooms emerge in central Pennsylvania.

I wasn’t doing a lot other than going on long hikes and taking classes remotely at Penn State for my doctoral degree in ecology and anthropology. One of the classes was an agroforestry class with Eric Burkhart. We studied how agriculture and forests benefit people and the environment.

These two things eventually led to a yearslong project on mushroom harvesting in our region.

Why people forage

Foragers have been harvesting wild mushrooms in what is now Pennsylvania and the rest of the U.S. mid-Atlantic region for generations, but the extent and specifics of the practice in the region had not been formally studied.

In 2021, Burkhart and I decided that we wanted to better understand the variety of wild mushroom species that Pennsylvania harvesters collect and what they use them for.

We conducted a series of surveys in 2022 and 2023 that revealed a wide variety of fungi are foraged in the region – though morels, chicken of the woods and chanterelles are most common. We also learned that harvesters use the mushrooms primarily for food and medicinal purposes, and that foragers create communities that share knowledge. These community based projects often use social media tools as a way for mushroom harvesters to share pictures, notes and even the results of DNA sequences.

Our findings were published in the journal Economic Botany in October 2025.

160 species

Having spent a year building connections with local mushroom harvesters, starting in central Pennsylvania, including members of mushroom clubs and mycological associations, we recruited a diverse group of harvesters from around the mid-Atlantic. We also used mushroom festivals, social media and word of mouth to get the word out.

We asked harvesters about their favorite mushrooms, common harvesting practices, resources they used while harvesting and any sustainability practices.

Over 800 harvesters responded to the survey and reported that, collectively, they foraged 160 species of wild mushrooms. Morels and chicken of the woods were the two most popular, as each were reported by 13% of respondents. About 10% of respondents reported collecting chanterelles. Other popular species were hen of the woods, oysters, lion’s mane, black trumpet, honey mushroom, turkey tail, bolete, reishi, puffball, chaga, shrimp of the woods and Dryad’s saddle, which is also known as the pheasant’s back mushroom.

Harvesters reported a variety of reasons for collecting mushrooms. Many collected morels and chanterelle to eat, and species such as turkey tail, reishi and chaga for medicinal purposes. Art was another common reason cited for foraging, with photography being the most popular use, followed by using mushrooms to create natural dyes and pigments.

Other survey respondents said they foraged to feel more connected to nature. And while there is a thriving commercial wild mushroom industry in the region, we found that only a small minority of harvesters sell their mushrooms. Most people reported giving their mushrooms to friends, neighbors and family.

Citizen science

We also wanted to better understand which resources mushroom harvesters turn to in order to learn more about this hobby. We asked all the harvesters what they used as a resource when they were first learning to hunt for mushrooms. A quarter of new harvesters said they used the “the internet,” followed by “family,” at 24%, and then guide books, at 20%.

Based on the survey responses, we also learned that mushroom-identification phone apps are growing in popularity, especially among new harvesters. For example, a commonly used app called iNaturalist allows harvesters to upload a few pictures of their find – one of the mushroom in its habitat, another of the underside of the cap, and a third of the entire mushroom. From there, other community members can comment and help with identification.

Harvesters also use these apps to contribute to community science projects that document biodiversity.

Some mushrooms are poisonous if eaten, which is part of why harvesters are so careful with their identification. When learning a new mushroom species, it’s important to look into multiple sources to make sure what you’re harvesting is safe to eat.

With more harvesters documenting their findings on social media and sharing information about fungal biodiversity in the region, there is much to glean and learn about the diverse world of mushrooms in the mid-Atlantic. We believe that deeper collaboration between community groups and researchers at universities and other institutions is an opportunity for scientific growth within the field of mycology. This collaboration can support long-term tracking of fungal populations and any impact that harvesters might have on them.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Amy Wrobleski receives funding from the Mycological Association of Washington DC.

Eric Burkhart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Mid-Atlantic mushroom foragers collect 160 species for food, medicine, art and science – https://theconversation.com/mid-atlantic-mushroom-foragers-collect-160-species-for-food-medicine-art-and-science-268143

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephen DiKerby, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

---

How will the universe end? – Iez M., age 9, Rochester, New York

---

Whether the universe will “end” at all is not certain, but all evidence suggests it will continue being humanity’s cosmic home for a very, very long time.

The universe – all of space and time, and all matter and energy – began about 14 billion years ago in a rapid expansion called the Big Bang, but since then it has been in a state of continuous change. First, it was full of a diffuse gas of the particles that now make up atoms: protons, neutrons and electrons. Then, that gas collapsed into stars and galaxies.

Our understanding of the future of the universe is informed by the objects and processes we observe today. As an astrophysicist, I observe objects like distant galaxies, which lets me study how stars and galaxies change over time. By doing so, I develop theories that predict how the universe will change in the future.

Predicting the future by studying the past?

Predicting the future of the universe by extending what we see today is extrapolation. It’s risky, because something unexpected could happen.

Interpolation – connecting the dots within a dataset – is much safer. Imagine you have a picture of yourself when you were 5 years old, and then another when you were 7 years old. Someone could probably guess what you looked like when you were 6. That’s interpolation.

Maybe they could extrapolate from the two pictures to what you’d look like when you are 8 or 9 years old, but no one can accurately predict too far into the future. Maybe in a few years you get glasses or suddenly get really tall.

Scientists can predict what the universe will probably look like a few billion years into the future by extrapolating how stars and galaxies change over time, but eventually things could get weird. The universe and the stuff within might once again change, like it has in the past.

How will stars change in the future?

Good news: The Sun, our medium-sized yellow star, is going to continue shining for billions of years. It’s about halfway through its 10 billion-year lifetime. The lifetime of a star depends on its size. Big, hot, blue stars live shorter lives, while tiny, cool, red stars live for much longer.

Today, some galaxies are still producing new stars, but others have depleted their star-forming gas. When a galaxy stops forming stars, the blue stars quickly go “supernova” and disappear, exploding after only a few million years. Then, billions of years later, the yellow stars like the Sun eject their outer layers into a nebula, leaving only the red stars puttering along. Eventually, all galaxies throughout the universe will stop producing new stars, and the starlight filling the universe will gradually redden and dim.

In trillions of years – hundreds of times longer than the universe’s current age – these red stars will also fade away into darkness. But until then, there will be lots of stars providing light and warmth.

How will galaxies change in the future?

Think of building a sand castle on the beach. Each bucket of sand makes the castle bigger and bigger. Galaxies grow over time in a similar way by eating up smaller galaxies. These galactic mergers will continue into the future.

In galaxy clusters, hundreds of galaxies fall inward toward their shared center, often resulting in messy collisions. In these mergers, spiral galaxies, which are orderly disks, combine in chaotic ways into disordered blob-shaped clouds of stars. Think of how easy it is to turn a well-constructed sand castle into a big mess by kicking it over.

For this reason, the universe over time will have fewer spiral galaxies and more elliptical galaxies because the spiral galaxies combine into elliptical galaxies.

The Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy might combine in this way in a few billion years. Don’t worry: The stars in each galaxy would whiz past each other totally unharmed, and future stargazers would get a fantastic view of the two galaxies merging.

How will the universe itself change in the future?

The Big Bang kick-started an expansion that probably will continue in the future. The gravity of all the stuff in the universe – stars, galaxies, gas, dark matter – pulls inward and slows down the expansion, and some theories suggest that the universe’s expansion will coast along or slow to a halt.

However, some evidence suggests that some unknown force is starting to exert a repulsive force, causing expansion to speed up. Scientists call this outward force dark energy, but very little is known about it. Like raisins in a baking cookie, galaxies will zoom away from each other faster and faster. If this continues into the future, other galaxies might be too far apart to observe from the Milky Way.

To summarize the best current prediction of the future: Star formation will shut down, so galaxies will be full of old, red, dim stars gradually cooling into darkness. Each group or cluster of galaxies will merge into a single, massive, elliptical galaxy. The accelerated expansion of the universe will make it impossible to observe other galaxies beyond the local group.

This scenario eventually winds down into a dark eternity, lasting trillions of years. New data might come to light that changes this story, and the next stage in the universe’s history might be something totally different and unexpectedly beautiful. Depending on how you look at it, the universe might not have an “end,” after all. Even if what exists is very different from how the universe is now, it’s hard to envision a distant future where the universe is entirely gone.

How does this scenario make you feel? It sometimes makes me feel wistful, which is a type of sadness, but then I remember we live at a very exciting time in the story of the universe: right at the start, in an era full of exciting stars and galaxies to observe! The cosmos can support human society and curiosity for billions of years into the future, so there’s lots of time to keep exploring and searching for answers.

---

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Stephen DiKerby receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

– ref. How will the universe end? – https://theconversation.com/how-will-the-universe-end-269678

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marcos Fernandez Tous, Assistant Professor of Space Studies, University of North Dakota

Every year, companies and space agencies launch hundreds of rockets into space – and that number is set to grow dramatically with ambitious missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. But these dreams hinge on one critical challenge: propulsion – the methods used to push rockets and spacecraft forward.

To make interplanetary travel faster, safer and more efficient, scientists need breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Artificial intelligence is one type of technology that has begun to provide some of these necessary breakthroughs.

We’re a team of engineers and graduate students who are studying how AI in general, and a subset of AI called machine learning in particular, can transform spacecraft propulsion. From optimizing nuclear thermal engines to managing complex plasma confinement in fusion systems, AI is reshaping propulsion design and operations. It is quickly becoming an indispensable partner in humankind’s journey to the stars.

Machine learning and reinforcement learning

Machine learning is a branch of AI that identifies patterns in data that it has not explicitly been trained on. It is a vast field with its own branches, with a lot of applications. Each branch emulates intelligence in different ways: by recognizing patterns, parsing and generating language, or learning from experience. This last subset in particular, commonly known as reinforcement learning, teaches machines to perform their tasks by rating their performance, enabling them to continuously improve through experience.

As a simple example, imagine a chess player. The player does not calculate every move but rather recognizes patterns from playing a thousand matches. Reinforcement learning creates similar intuitive expertise in machines and systems, but at a computational speed and scale impossible for humans. It learns through experiences and iterations by observing its environment. These observations allows the machine to correctly interpret each outcome and deploy the best strategies for the system to reach its goal.

Reinforcement learning can improve human understanding of deeply complex systems – those that challenge the limits of human intuition. It can help determine the most efficient trajectory for a spacecraft heading anywhere in space, and it does so by optimizing the propulsion necessary to send the craft there. It can also potentially design better propulsion systems, from selecting the best materials to coming up with configurations that transfer heat between parts in the engine more efficiently.

Reinforcement learning for propulsion systems

In regard to space propulsion, reinforcement learning generally falls into two categories: those that assist during the design phase – when engineers define mission needs and system capabilities – and those that support real-time operation once the spacecraft is in flight.

Among the most exotic and promising propulsion concepts is nuclear propulsion, which harnesses the same forces that power atomic bombs and fuel the Sun: nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

Fission works by splitting heavy atoms such as uranium or plutonium to release energy – a principle used in most terrestrial nuclear reactors. Fusion, on the other hand, merges lighter atoms such as hydrogen to produce even more energy, though it requires far more extreme conditions to initiate.

Fission is a more mature technology that has been tested in some space propulsion prototypes. It has even been used in space in the form of radioisotope thermoelectric generators, like those that powered the Voyager probes. But fusion remains a tantalizing frontier.

Nuclear thermal propulsion could one day take spacecraft to Mars and beyond at a lower cost than that of simply burning fuel. It would get a craft there faster than electric propulsion, which uses a heated gas made of charged particles called plasma.

Unlike these systems, nuclear propulsion relies on heat generated from atomic reactions. That heat is transferred to a propellant, typically hydrogen, which expands and exits through a nozzle to produce thrust and shoot the craft forward.

So how can reinforcement learning help engineers develop and operate these powerful technologies? Let’s begin with design.

Reinforcement learning’s role in design

Early nuclear thermal propulsion designs from the 1960s, such as those in NASA’s NERVA program, used solid uranium fuel molded into prism-shaped blocks. Since then, engineers have explored alternative configurations – from beds of ceramic pebbles to grooved rings with intricate channels.

Why has there been so much experimentation? Because the more efficiently a reactor can transfer heat from the fuel to the hydrogen, the more thrust it generates.

This area is where reinforcement learning has proved to be essential. Optimizing the geometry and heat flow between fuel and propellant is a complex problem, involving countless variables – from the material properties to the amount of hydrogen that flows across the reactor at any given moment. Reinforcement learning can analyze these design variations and identify configurations that maximize heat transfer. Imagine it as a smart thermostat but for a rocket engine – one you definitely don’t want to stand too close to, given the extreme temperatures involved.

Reinforcement learning and fusion technology

Reinforcement learning also plays a key role in developing nuclear fusion technology. Large-scale experiments such as the JT-60SA tokamak in Japan are pushing the boundaries of fusion energy, but their massive size makes them impractical for spaceflight. That’s why researchers are exploring compact designs such as polywells. These exotic devices look like hollow cubes, about a few inches across, and they confine plasma in magnetic fields to create the conditions necessary for fusion.

Controlling magnetic fields within a polywell is no small feat. The magnetic fields must be strong enough to keep hydrogen atoms bouncing around until they fuse – a process that demands immense energy to start but can become self-sustaining once underway. Overcoming this challenge is necessary for scaling this technology for nuclear thermal propulsion.

Reinforcement learning and energy generation

However, reinforcement learning’s role doesn’t end with design. It can help manage fuel consumption – a critical task for missions that must adapt on the fly. In today’s space industry, there’s growing interest in spacecraft that can serve different roles depending on the mission’s needs and how they adapt to priority changes through time.

Military applications, for instance, must respond rapidly to shifting geopolitical scenarios. An example of a technology adapted to fast changes is Lockheed Martin’s LM400 satellite, which has varied capabilities such as missile warning or remote sensing.

But this flexibility introduces uncertainty. How much fuel will a mission require? And when will it need it? Reinforcement learning can help with these calculations.

From bicycles to rockets, learning through experience – whether human or machine – is shaping the future of space exploration. As scientists push the boundaries of propulsion and intelligence, AI is playing a growing role in space travel. It may help scientists explore within and beyond our solar system and open the gates for new discoveries.

Sreejith Vidhyadharan Nair receives funding from the University of North Dakota. I have previously received external research funding from agencies such as the FAA and NASA; however, these projects were not related to nuclear propulsion systems.

Marcos Fernandez Tous, Preeti Nair, and Sai Susmitha Guddanti do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. AI is making spacecraft propulsion more efficient – and could even lead to nuclear-powered rockets – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-making-spacecraft-propulsion-more-efficient-and-could-even-lead-to-nuclear-powered-rockets-268643

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alex McPhee-Browne, PhD student studying the American and global far right, University of Cambridge

When Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes on his show last month, the response followed a familiar script. Critics condemned the platforming of a white nationalist. Defenders invoked free speech. Social media erupted.

“We’ve had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can’t tell him who to interview,” President Donald Trump said on Nov. 17, 2025. “Ultimately, people have to decide.”

Fuentes is a 27-year-old livestreamer with openly antisemitic views. He has called Adolf Hitler both “awesome” and “right.” But he has become impossible for the Republican Party to banish, despite repeated attempts by some party leaders.

This dynamic reveals how fringe ideologies operate differently today compared to the mid-20th century, when institutional gatekeepers – political parties, law enforcement, the media – could more effectively contain extremist movements.

And through their 21st-century methods of communication and operation, Nick Fuentes and his followers – the “Groypers” – have managed to get what their 20th-century predecessors could not: widespread awareness and political influence.

Atlanta, 1940: Brazen but brief fascist group

As a historian of the American far right, I have spent years examining how fascist movements adapted to the conditions of postwar America. The trajectory from the 1940s until today shows a fundamental shift: from defined organizational structures that could be dismantled to diffuse cultural movements that spread through social media.

Let me offer an example.

In 1946, barely a year after Hitler’s defeat, young men in khaki shirts marched through Atlanta, Georgia, performing Nazi salutes and promising racial vengeance.

Led by Homer Loomis Jr. – a Princeton dropout who called Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” his “bible” – this group, known as the Columbians, offered Atlanta a glimpse of explicit fascism. They conducted armed patrols, held uniformed drills and even drew up blueprints for blowing up City Hall.

Their brazenness, however, was matched by their brevity. Ten months after forming, Atlanta authorities revoked their charter and jailed the ringleaders.

The swift suppression seemed to prove that explicit fascism had no future in postwar America. And for decades that held true. Open Nazi sympathizers remained marginal, their organizations small and easily ostracized.

In the 1970s, when a group of American Nazis planned to march in Skokie, Illinois, a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago, the event was most notable for the counterprotests it triggered.

Mainstreaming fascism

But the Columbians’ failure, it turned out, was organizational, not ideological. The government could revoke a charter and convict leaders. They could not repress a mood.

In the digital age, Fuentes represents that mood as a diffuse sensibility rather than a structured organization. Where the Columbians wore uniforms that advertised their fascist allegiance, Fuentes wears suits and frames his worldview in the rhetoric of “America First.”

The difference is strategic. In a 2019 livestream, Fuentes explained his approach openly: “Bit by bit we start to break down these walls … and then one day, we become the mainstream.”

This packaging marks a deliberate shift. Fuentes treats plausible deniability – of fascism, of antisemitism – not as a weakness but as a central feature. The content of his message remains extreme, but the ironic wrapping enables something the Columbians never achieved – cultural saturation.

Fuentes’s followers, Groypers, have in turn mastered this diffusion strategy.

For many conservatives under 40, exposure to Groyper-style content isn’t in meetings. They absorb it through social media feeds, Discord servers and group chats. A tone of grievance and ironic provocation becomes prominent background noise, moving the marginal toward the mainstream. A generation raised on anti-woke content, 4chan and transgressive memes now shapes the neofascist movement’s tone.

At the same time, institutional authority has in many ways effectively collapsed. The Columbians faced united opposition from media, prosecutors and politicians. Those gatekeepers no longer control conservatism or the white nationalists who are adjacent to it.

Achieving what predecessors could not

The Carlson-Fuentes interview has instead exposed a rift within MAGA circles.

Several board members of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with deep ties to the Trump administration, have resigned over the controversy, including one this week.

They were angered that Kevin Roberts, the foundation’s president, released a video defending the interview. Roberts has apologized for some of its contents but not retracted it.

Republicans aren’t all in agreement about whether Groypers represent a threat or an important constituency. Members of Congress have given speeches at Fuentes’ conferences; Trump dined with him at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

Last year, JD Vance, now the vice president, called Fuentes a “total loser.” Fuentes attempted, without success, to mobilize Groypers against Trump in 2024 and called the president a “scam artist” earlier this year for failing to release the files in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Yet the broader Groyperfication of conservative youth culture proceeds apace. Trump reversed his stance on the Epstein files. In defending Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, Trump said, “I don’t know much about him.”

Trump said roughly the same thing when he sat down to dinner with Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022. Still, that event showed that the Groypers, now six years into their existence, have achieved what their predecessors could not: genuine cultural penetration and political influence.

The old remedies no longer function. Authorities cannot ban an atmosphere or revoke the charter of a meme. Social media platforms designed to maximize engagement often maximize anger. Fuentes and imitators exploit this frustration.

They remain controversial, and the Groypers’ lack of formal institutions could mean they will at some point fade like other far-right youth movements. Trump’s eventual exit from politics may also deprive them of a central reference point.

But they might represent something new: a post-organizational extremism uniquely adapted to digital life.

The Columbians once promised to control Atlanta in six months and America in 10 years. They lasted 10 months. The Groypers have already long outlasted them. That endurance signals a new, far more successful approach.

Alex McPhee-Browne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Nick Fuentes is a master of exploiting the current social media opportunities for extremism – https://theconversation.com/nick-fuentes-is-a-master-of-exploiting-the-current-social-media-opportunities-for-extremism-269776

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ken Hughes, Research Specialist, the Miller Center, University of Virginia

Something’s missing from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s accounts of “Operation Northwoods.” Something that explains the origins of this menu of false flag operations – pretexts for war with Cuba – drafted by the Pentagon in March 1962.

Something about his father.

Most people remember Robert F. Kennedy as President John F. Kennedy’s closest confidant, campaign manager and attorney general, the tough but idealistic younger brother who helped him through the Cuban missile crisis and later waged an antiwar campaign for president, before becoming the second Kennedy brother slain by an assassin.

During Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s political rise to his current position as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he capitalized on the story of “Operation Northwoods,” giving his version of it in speeches, interviews, and two separate books.

Kennedy Jr. pinned the blame for the pretexts solely on “the highest officials in the U.S. military,” accusing them of “lethal zealotry,” decrying “how badly the American military leadership had lost its moral bearings.”

To illustrate the point, he cited one pretext at length: “A ‘Remember the Maine’ incident could be arranged in several forms: We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba.”

In each of these accounts, Kennedy Jr. omitted the most important part of the “Operation Northwoods” story: his father’s role. I learned of that role from documents declassified by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, in the Kennedy Library and in other archives while researching a book I’m writing, “Clandestine Camelot.”

Debacle with a chaser of deceit

In the first foreign policy memo he dictated, Attorney General Kennedy broached the idea of fabricating an attack on the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, one of the spoils of the Spanish-American War.

It was April 19, 1961, and the Bay of Pigs invasion was in mid-collapse. Roughly 1,500 CIA-trained and -financed Cuban expatriates were mounting a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary-turned-tyrant. Castro had the invaders pinned down on the beach under fire from Moscow-furnished MiG fighter jets.

It was then that the attorney general asked the president if they could get Central and South American nations “to take some action” to stop the flow of Russian arms to Cuba “if it was reported that one or two of Castro’s MiGs attacked Guantanamo Bay and the United States made noises like this was an act of war and that we might very well have to take armed action ourselves.”

Castro, of course, had not attacked the U.S. naval base. That would have meant war with America and the end of his regime.

President Kennedy didn’t act on his brother’s suggestion, but began including him regularly in foreign policymaking. Newspapers started calling RFK “the second most important man in the Western World.”

From subversion to military intervention

During the 1960 presidential campaign, JFK called Cuba a “Soviet satellite” and a “potential enemy missile or submarine base only 90 miles from our shores.” In November 1961, hoping to undo the Bay of Pigs failure, he created his own covert operation “to help Cuba overthrow the communist regime.” He put his brother Robert in charge of the secret program of subversion, code-named “Operation Mongoose.”

Fomenting revolution in Cuba faced an insurmountable obstacle: Castro was already powerful enough to crush any purely internal uprising.

CIA, State Department, and Defense Department officials agreed that the only way to overthrow Castro was a U.S. invasion.

Under Robert Kennedy’s leadership, the “Special Group (Augmented),” the interagency group JFK charged with overseeing Mongoose, proposed to change the covert operation’s goal from orchestrating subversion to justifying U.S. military intervention.

On March 5, 1962, the group asked Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs U. Alexis Johnson “to have a list prepared of various situations which would serve as a plausible pretext for intervention.” In the minutes of that meeting, someone crossed out “plausible pretext” and wrote “valid basis.”

The origin of ‘Operation Northwoods’

After the meeting, “in response to direction,” Mongoose operations chief Edward G. Lansdale asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for “a brief but precise description of pretexts which the JCS believes desirable for direct military intervention.”

The Joint Chiefs of Staff responded by drafting the document now known as “Operation Northwoods.”

Fun fact: No one called it “Operation Northwoods” at the time.

“Northwoods” was just a code word the Joint Chiefs of Staff used on Mongoose documents. In the 21st century, however, historians mistook the code word for a code name and gave the pretexts their unhistorical handle. There was no “Operation Northwoods,” but that didn’t stop it from getting its own Wikipedia page.

The Special Group (Augmented) voted on March 13, 1962, to alter the Mongoose guidelines to state “that final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention.”

Three days later, the group briefed the president on the revised guidelines, including secret “plans for creating plausible pretexts to use force, with the pretexts either attacks on U.S. aircraft or a Cuban action in Latin America for which we would retaliate.”

President Kennedy said “bluntly” that they were not then able to make a decision on the use of military force.

But he did tell the group to “go ahead on the guidelines.” Since the revised guidelines said that Cubans “will be used to prepare for and justify this [U.S. military] intervention, and thereafter to facilitate and support it,” the revision transformed Mongoose into a secret program to furnish the president with a pretext to invade Cuba if he so chose.

Fortunately, he didn’t.

Apocalyptic advice

The last recorded time Robert Kennedy urged his brother to consider a false flag operation was on Oct. 16, 1962, the first day of the Cuban missile crisis.

The president’s secret White House recording system captured Robert Kennedy advising him to consider fabricating a pretext for U.S military intervention: “Can I say that one other thing is whether we should also think of whether there is some other way we can get involved in this, through Guantánamo Bay or something. Or whether there’s some ship that … you know, sink the Maine again or something.”

JFK ignored the suggestion. Taking it would have, in all likelihood, started a nuclear war.

This year marks the centennial of Robert Kennedy’s birth, the perfect occasion to stop scapegoating the military for his darkest deeds. In drafting pretexts for war, the Pentagon was complying with instructions it received through the command structure the president established for Operation Mongoose. Generals have little choice but to comply with such instructions unless and until Congress outlaws false flag operations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote that the “Operation Northwoods memo should serve as a warning [to] the American people about the dangers of allowing the military to set goals or standards for our country.”

In reality, it reveals the dangers of letting someone like Robert F. Kennedy use the power of the U.S. government to deceive Americans about life-or-death matters.

Ken Hughes is a research specialist with the Presidential Recordings Program of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, whose work is funded in part by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

– ref. What Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t tell you about ‘Operation Northwoods,’ the false flag operation he loves to denounce – https://theconversation.com/what-robert-f-kennedy-jr-didnt-tell-you-about-operation-northwoods-the-false-flag-operation-he-loves-to-denounce-270205

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Francesco Agnellini, Lecturer in Digital and Data Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York

The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI.

Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the web are being generated by artificial intelligence.

As a scholar who explores how AI is built, how people are using it in their everyday lives, and how it’s affecting culture, I’ve thought a lot about what this technology can do and where it falls short.

If you’re more likely to read something written by AI than by a human on the internet, is it only a matter of time before human writing becomes obsolete? Or is this simply another technological development that humans will adapt to?

It isn’t all or nothing

Thinking about these questions reminded me of Umberto Eco’s essay “Apocalyptic and Integrated,” which was originally written in the early 1960s. Parts of it were later included in an anthology titled “Apocalypse Postponed,” which I first read as a college student in Italy.

In it, Eco draws a contrast between two attitudes toward mass media. There are the “apocalyptics” who fear cultural degradation and moral collapse. Then there are the “integrated” who champion new media technologies as a democratizing force for culture.

Back then, Eco was writing about the proliferation of TV and radio. Today, you’ll often see similar reactions to AI.

Yet Eco argued that both positions were too extreme. It isn’t helpful, he wrote, to see new media as either a dire threat or a miracle. Instead, he urged readers to look at how people and communities use these new tools, what risks and opportunities they create, and how they shape – and sometimes reinforce – power structures.

While I was teaching a course on deepfakes during the 2024 election, Eco’s lesson also came back to me. Those were days when some scholars and media outlets were regularly warning of an imminent “deepfake apocalypse.”

Would deepfakes be used to mimic major political figures and push targeted disinformation? What if, on the eve of an election, generative AI was used to mimic the voice of a candidate on a robocall telling voters to stay home?

Those fears weren’t groundless: Research shows that people aren’t especially good at identifying deepfakes. At the same time, they consistently overestimate their ability to do so.

In the end, though, the apocalypse was postponed. Post-election analyses found that deepfakes did seem to intensify some ongoing political trends, such as the erosion of trust and polarization, but there’s no evidence that they affected the final outcome of the election.

Listicles, news updates and how-to guides

Of course, the fears that AI raises for supporters of democracy are not the same as those it creates for writers and artists.

For them, the core concerns are about authorship: How can one person compete with a system trained on millions of voices that can produce text at hyper-speed? And if this becomes the norm, what will it do to creative work, both as an occupation and as a source of meaning?

It’s important to clarify what’s meant by “online content,” the phrase used in the Graphite study, which analyzed over 65,000 randomly selected articles of at least 100 words on the web. These can include anything from peer-reviewed research to promotional copy for miracle supplements.

A closer reading of the Graphite study shows that the AI-generated articles consist largely of general-interest writing: news updates, how-to guides, lifestyle posts, reviews and product explainers.

The primary economic purpose of this content is to persuade or inform, not to express originality or creativity. Put differently, AI appears to be most useful when the writing in question is low-stakes and formulaic: the weekend-in-Rome listicle, the standard cover letter, the text produced to market a business.

A whole industry of writers – mostly freelance, including many translators – has relied on precisely this kind of work, producing blog posts, how-to material, search engine optimization text and social media copy. The rapid adoption of large language models has already displaced many of the gigs that once sustained them.

Collaborating with AI

The dramatic loss of this work points toward another issue raised by the Graphite study: the question of authenticity, not only in identifying who or what produced a text, but also in understanding the value that humans attach to creative activity.

How can you distinguish a human-written article from a machine-generated one? And does that ability even matter?

Over time, that distinction is likely to grow less significant, particularly as more writing emerges from interactions between humans and AI. A writer might draft a few lines, let an AI expand them and then reshape that output into the final text.

This article is no exception. As a non-native English speaker, I often rely on AI to refine my language before sending drafts to an editor. At times the system attempts to reshape what I mean. But once its stylistic tendencies become familiar, it becomes possible to avoid them and maintain a personal tone.

Also, artificial intelligence is not entirely artificial, since it is trained on human-made material. It’s worth noting that even before AI, human writing has never been entirely human, either. Every technology, from parchment and stylus paper to the typewriter and now AI, has shaped how people write and how readers make sense of it.

Another important point: AI models are increasingly trained on datasets that include not only human writing but also AI-generated and human–AI co-produced text.

This has raised concerns about their ability to continue improving over time. Some commentators have already described a sense of disillusionment following the release of newer large models, with companies struggling to deliver on their promises.

Human voices may matter even more

But what happens when people become overly reliant on AI in their writing?

Some studies show that writers may feel more creative when they use artificial intelligence for brainstorming, yet the range of ideas often becomes narrower. This uniformity affects style as well: These systems tend to pull users toward similar patterns of wording, which reduces the differences that usually mark an individual voice. Researchers also note a shift toward Western – and especially English-speaking – norms in the writing of people from other cultures, raising concerns about a new form of AI colonialism.

In this context, texts that display originality, voice and stylistic intention are likely to become even more meaningful within the media landscape, and they may play a crucial role in training the next generations of models.

If you set aside the more apocalyptic scenarios and assume that AI will continue to advance – perhaps at a slower pace than in the recent past – it’s quite possible that thoughtful, original, human-generated writing will become even more valuable.

Put another way: The work of writers, journalists and intellectuals will not become superfluous simply because much of the web is no longer written by humans.

Francesco Agnellini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. More than half of new articles on the internet are now being written by AI – is human writing headed for extinction? – https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-new-articles-on-the-internet-are-now-being-written-by-ai-is-human-writing-headed-for-extinction-268354

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Emily Ronay Johnston, Assistant Teaching Professor of Global Arts, Media and Writing Studies, University of California, Merced

Ordinary and universal, the act of writing changes the brain. From dashing off a heated text message to composing an op-ed, writing allows you to, at once, name your pain and create distance from it. Writing can shift your mental state from overwhelm and despair to grounded clarity — a shift that reflects resilience.

Psychology, the media and the wellness industry shape public perceptions of resilience: Social scientists study it, journalists celebrate it, and wellness brands sell it.

They all tell a similar story: Resilience is an individual quality that people can strengthen with effort. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as an ongoing process of personal growth through life’s challenges. News headlines routinely praise individuals who refuse to give up or find silver linings in times of hardship. The wellness industry promotes relentless self-improvement as the path to resilience.

In my work as a professor of writing studies, I research how people use writing to navigate trauma and practice resilience. I have witnessed thousands of students turn to the written word to work through emotions and find a sense of belonging. Their writing habits suggest that writing fosters resilience. Insights from psychology and neuroscience can help explain how.

Writing rewires the brain

In the 1980s, psychologist James Pennebaker developed a therapeutic technique called expressive writing to help patients process trauma and psychological challenges. With this technique, continuously journaling about something painful helps create mental distance from the experience and eases its cognitive load.

In other words, externalizing emotional distress through writing fosters safety. Expressive writing turns pain into a metaphorical book on a shelf, ready to be reopened with intention. It signals the brain, “You don’t need to carry this anymore.”

Translating emotions and thoughts into words on paper is a complex mental task. It involves retrieving memories and planning what to do with them, engaging brain areas associated with memory and decision-making. It also involves putting those memories into language, activating the brain’s visual and motor systems.

Writing things down supports memory consolidation — the brain’s conversion of short-term memories into long-term ones. The process of integration makes it possible for people to reframe painful experiences and manage their emotions. In essence, writing can help free the mind to be in the here and now.

Taking action through writing

The state of presence that writing can elicit is not just an abstract feeling; it reflects complex activity in the nervous system.

Brain imaging studies show that putting feelings into words helps regulate emotions. Labeling emotions — whether through expletives and emojis or carefully chosen words — has multiple benefits. It calms the amygdala, a cluster of neurons that detects threat and triggers the fear response: fight, flight, freeze or fawn. It also engages the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that supports goal-setting and problem-solving.

In other words, the simple act of naming your emotions can help you shift from reaction to response. Instead of identifying with your feelings and mistaking them for facts, writing can help you simply become aware of what’s arising and prepare for deliberate action.

Even mundane writing tasks like making a to-do list stimulate parts of the brain involved in reasoning and decision-making, helping you regain focus.

Making meaning through writing

Choosing to write is also choosing to make meaning. Studies suggest that having a sense of agency is both a prerequisite for, and an outcome of, writing.

Researchers have long documented how writing is a cognitive activity — one that people use to communicate, yes, but also to understand the human experience. As many in the field of writing studies recognize, writing is a form of thinking — a practice that people never stop learning. With that, writing has the potential to continually reshape the mind. Writing not only expresses but actively creates identity.

Writing also regulates your psychological state. And the words you write are themselves proof of regulation — the evidence of resilience.

Popular coverage of human resilience often presents it as extraordinary endurance. News coverage of natural disasters implies that the more severe the trauma, the greater the personal growth. Pop psychology often equates resilience with unwavering optimism. Such representations can obscure ordinary forms of adaptation. Strategies people already use to cope with everyday life — from rage-texting to drafting a resignation letter — signify transformation.

Building resilience through writing

These research-backed tips can help you develop a writing practice conducive to resilience:

1. Write by hand whenever possible. In contrast to typing or tapping on a device, handwriting requires greater cognitive coordination. It slows your thinking, allowing you to process information, form connections and make meaning.

2. Write daily. Start small and make it regular. Even jotting brief notes about your day — what happened, what you’re feeling, what you’re planning or intending — can help you get thoughts out of your head and ease rumination.

3. Write before reacting. When strong feelings surge, write them down first. Keep a notebook within reach and make it a habit to write it before you say it. Doing so can support reflective thinking, helping you act with purpose and clarity.

4. Write a letter you never send. Don’t just write down your feelings — address them to the person or situation that’s troubling you. Even writing a letter to yourself can provide a safe space for release without the pressure of someone else’s reaction.

5. Treat writing as a process. Any time you draft something and ask for feedback on it, you practice stepping back to consider alternative perspectives. Applying that feedback through revision can strengthen self-awareness and build confidence.

Resilience may be as ordinary as the journal entries people scribble, the emails they exchange, the task lists they create — even the essays students pound out for professors.

The act of writing is adaptation in progress.

Emily Johnston receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

– ref. Writing builds resilience by changing your brain, helping you face everyday challenges – https://theconversation.com/writing-builds-resilience-by-changing-your-brain-helping-you-face-everyday-challenges-265188

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charli Carpenter, Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst

As the Trump administration carries out what many observers say are illegal military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean allegedly smuggling drugs, six Democratic members of Congress issued a video on Nov. 18, 2025, telling the military “You can refuse illegal orders” and “You must refuse illegal orders.”

The lawmakers have all served either in the military or the intelligence community. Their message sparked a furious response on social media from President Donald Trump, who called the legislators’ action “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”

One of the lawmakers, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, told The New York Times that she had heard from troops currently serving that they were worried about their own liability in actions such as the ones in the Caribbean.

This is not the first time Trump has put members of the military in situations whose legality has been questioned. But a large percentage of service members understand their duty to follow the law in such a difficult moment.

We are scholars of international relations and international law. We conducted survey research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Human Security Lab and discovered that many service members do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so.

The ethical dilemma

With his Aug. 11, 2025, announcement that he was sending the National Guard – along with federal law enforcement – into Washington, D.C. to fight crime, Trump edged U.S. troops closer to the kind of military-civilian confrontations that can cross ethical and legal lines.

Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have alarmed international human rights observers. His administration has deported immigrants without due process, held detainees in inhumane conditions, threatened the forcible removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National Guard and federal military troops to Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, Chicago and other cities to quell largely peaceful protests or enforce immigration laws.

When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which many assert are clear violations of the law, men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they respond to an order they believe is illegal?

The question may already be affecting troop morale. “The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”

Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind – so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and they are conditioned to obey. Yet if they obey “manifestly unlawful” orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that U.S. troops are ill-equipped to recognize this threshold.

Compelled to disobey

U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.

Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.

Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would “obey any order.” Only 9% “didn’t know,” and only 2% had “no comment.”

When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25% of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were “obviously wrong,” “obviously criminal” or “obviously unconstitutional.”

Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that “orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting non-combatants, are not just illegal — they’re immoral. As military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse commands that betray that duty.”

Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they would feel compelled to disobey.

The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed, was “harming civilians,” while another 15% of respondents gave a variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as “torturing prisoners” and “harming U.S. troops.”

One wrote that “an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity, or punishing others without legal process.”

Soldiers, not lawyers

But the open-ended answers pointed to another struggle troops face: Some no longer trust U.S. law as useful guidance.

Writing in their own words about how they would know an illegal order when they saw it, more troops emphasized international law as a standard of illegality than emphasized U.S. law.

Others implied that acts that are illegal under international law might become legal in the U.S.

“Trump will issue illegal orders,” wrote one respondent. “The new laws will allow it,” wrote another. A third wrote, “We are not required to obey such laws.”

Several emphasized the U.S. political situation directly in their remarks, stating they’d disobey “oppression or harming U.S. civilians that clearly goes against the Constitution” or an order for “use of the military to carry out deportations.”

Still, the percentage of respondents who said they would disobey specific orders – such as torture – is lower than the percentage of respondents who recognized the responsibility to disobey in general.

This is not surprising: Troops are trained to obey and face numerous social, psychological and institutional pressures to do so. By contrast, most troops receive relatively little training in the laws of war or human rights law.

Political scientists have found, however, that having information on international law affects attitudes about the use of force among the general public. It can also affect decision-making by military personnel.

This finding was also borne out in our survey.

When we explicitly reminded troops that shooting civilians was a violation of international law, their willingness to disobey increased 8 percentage points.

Drawing the line

As my research with another scholar showed in 2020, even thinking about law and morality can make a difference in opposition to certain war crimes.

The preliminary results from our survey led to a similar conclusion. Troops who answered questions on “manifestly unlawful orders” before they were asked questions on specific scenarios were much more likely to say they would refuse those specific illegal orders.

When asked if they would follow an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian city, for example, 69% of troops who received that question first said they would obey the order.

But when the respondents were asked to think about and comment on the duty to disobey unlawful orders before being asked if they would follow the order to bomb, the percentage who would obey the order dropped 13 points to 56%.

While many troops said they might obey questionable orders, the large number who would not is remarkable.

Military culture makes disobedience difficult: Soldiers can be court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order, or for disobeying a lawful one.

Yet between one-third to half of the U.S. troops we surveyed would be willing to disobey if ordered to shoot or starve civilians, torture prisoners or drop a nuclear bomb on a city.

The service members described the methods they would use. Some would confront their superiors directly. Others imagined indirect methods: asking questions, creating diversions, going AWOL, “becoming violently ill.”

Criminologist Eva Whitehead researched actual cases of troop disobedience of illegal orders and found that when some troops disobey – even indirectly – others can more easily find the courage to do the same.

Whitehead’s research showed that those who refuse to follow illegal or immoral orders are most effective when they stand up for their actions openly.

The initial results of our survey – coupled with a recent spike in calls to the GI Rights Hotline – suggest American men and women in uniform don’t want to obey unlawful orders.

Some are standing up loudly. Many are thinking ahead to what they might do if confronted with unlawful orders. And those we surveyed are looking for guidance from the Constitution and international law to determine where they may have to draw that line.

This story, initially published on Aug. 13, 2025, has been updated to include a reference to a video issued by Democratic members of Congress.

Zahra Marashi, an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributed to the research for this article.

Charli Carpenter directs Human Security Lab which has received funding from University of Massachusetts College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the Lex International Fund of the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.

Geraldine Santoso does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Just follow orders or obey the law? What US troops told us about refusing illegal commands – https://theconversation.com/just-follow-orders-or-obey-the-law-what-us-troops-told-us-about-refusing-illegal-commands-270401

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By João Marinotti, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University

In late October 2025, as much as US$2 billion vanished from a digital marketplace. This wasn’t a hack or a bubble bursting. It happened because one company, Valve, changed the rules for its video game Counter-Strike 2, a popular first-person shooter with a global player base of nearly 30 million monthly users.

For years, its players have bought, sold and traded digital cosmetic items, known as “skins.” Some rare items, particularly knives and gloves, commanded high prices in real-world money – up to $1.5 million – leading some gamers to treat the market like an investment portfolio. As a result, many investment-style analytics websites charge monthly fees for financial insight, trends and transaction data from this digital marketplace.

In one fell swoop, Valve unilaterally changed the game. It expanded the “trade up contract,” allowing players to exchange – or “trade up” – a number of their common assets into knives or gloves.

By flipping this switch, Valve instantly upended digital scarcity. The market was flooded with new supply, and the value of existing high-end items collapsed. Prices plummeted, initially erasing half the market’s total value, which exceeded $6 billion before the recent crash. Although a partial recovery brought the net loss to roughly 25%, significant volatility continues, leaving investors unsure whether the bottom has truly fallen out.

Many of those who saw their digital fortunes evaporate immediately wondered whether there was anything they could do to get their money back. Speaking as a law professor and a gamer myself, the answer isn’t what they want to hear: no. In fact, the existing legal structure largely protects Valve’s ability to engage in this sort of digital market manipulation. Players and investors were simply out of luck.

The Counter-Strike 2 crash reveals a troubling reality that extends far beyond video games: Corporations have built exchange-scale investment markets governed primarily by private terms-of-service agreements, rather than the robust set of public regulations that oversee traditional financial and consumer markets. These digital economies occupy a legal blind spot, lacking the fundamental guardrails of property rights, meaningful consumer protection or even securities regulation.

Your digital ‘property’ isn’t really yours

If you spend real money on a digital item, it may feel like you should own it. Legally, you don’t.

The digital economy is built on a crucial distinction between ownership and licensing. When users sign up for Steam, Valve’s platform, they agree to the Steam subscriber agreement. Buried in that contract is a critical piece of legalese stating that all digital assets and services provided by Valve, including the Counter-Strike 2 skins, are merely “licensed, not sold.” The license granted to users “confers no title or ownership” at all. This isn’t meaningless corporate jargon; it’s a legal standard routinely affirmed by U.S. courts.

The legal implication is clear: Because players only license their skins, they have no property rights over them. When Valve changed the game’s mechanics in a way that collapsed the items’ market value, it didn’t steal, damage or destroy anyone’s “property.” In the eyes of the law, Valve simply altered the conditions of a license, something that its terms-of-service agreement allows it to do unilaterally, at any time, for any reason.

Consumer protection laws don’t apply

While the Counter-Strike 2 crash may seem like a violation of consumer rights, current laws are ill-equipped to handle this type of corporate behavior.

Lawmakers have begun addressing concerns about digital goods, primarily focusing on instances where purchased movies or games disappear entirely from user libraries. For example, California recently enacted AB 2426. This law requires transparency, prohibiting terms like “buy” or “purchase” unless the consumer confirms that they understand they will receive only a revocable license.

As commendable as this law is, it protects only against confusion and loss of access, not loss of market value when platforms rebalance virtual economies. Valve can comply with consumer transparency laws and still adjust the supply of digital items, rendering them valueless overnight. Ultimately, current consumer protection laws are designed to ensure users know what they are licensing. They do not, however, create ownership interests or protect the speculative value of those digital items.

Game items are treated like unregulated stocks

Perhaps the most significant legal vacuum is the absence of financial regulation. The Counter-Strike 2 economy, a multibillion-dollar ecosystem with dedicated investors and third-party cash markets, looks and behaves like a traditional financial market. Yet, it remains outside the purview of any financial regulator, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under U.S. law, the primary standard for determining whether an asset should be governed as a security is the Howey test. According to this Supreme Court precedent, an asset is a security if it meets four criteria. Securities involve an “investment of money” in a “common enterprise” with a reasonable expectation of “profits” derived from the “efforts of others.”

Counter-Strike 2 skins arguably meet all of these criteria. Participants invest real money in a common enterprise – Valve’s platform – with an expectation of profit. Crucially, that profit depends on the “efforts of others.” The SEC notes this prong is met when a promoter provides “essential managerial efforts” that affect the enterprise’s success. Valve controls the game’s development, manages the platform and – as the recent update proves – dictates item supply and scarcity.

If a publicly traded company unilaterally changed its rules in a way that predictably tanked the price of its own shares, regulators would immediately investigate for market manipulation. So how can Valve get away with this? Three things cut against the skins’ status as securities.

First is their “consumptive intent” – skins are primarily game cosmetics. Second, there’s no way to convert the skins into dollars within Valve’s own ecosystem. In other words, third-party markets allow users to cash out, but these markets operate outside Valve’s own immediate control. And finally, the Howey test generally governs assets, such as stocks and bonds, that grant investors enforceable rights. Valve’s licensing scheme attempts to circumvent this by ensuring players hold nothing but a revocable license.

In my view, the $2 billion crash is a wake-up call. As digital economies grow in financial significance, society must decide: Will these markets continue to be governed solely by private corporate contracts? Or will they require integration into more robust legal frameworks, such as securities regulation, consumer protection and property law?

João Marinotti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. $2B Counter-Strike 2 crash exposes a legal black hole: Your digital investments aren’t really yours – https://theconversation.com/2b-counter-strike-2-crash-exposes-a-legal-black-hole-your-digital-investments-arent-really-yours-268749