An unusually vivid look at the state of the art in drone warfare in Ukraine www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

"We can’t say what dogs’ preferences might be under different circumstances. But we do know that they have not chosen all of the intimacies that we impose upon them." go read @rossandersen.bsky.social's latest www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

Thank you @rossandersen.bsky.social for a gorgeously written (alternately funny and distressing) story that has created a new intrusive thought for me: Does my dog have enough privacy???? www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

Had the great pleasure of reviewing @peterbrannen.bsky.social’s extraordinary new book (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...

"The reasons monstrously abusive relationships persist between people are as complex, I think, as the mathematics of turbulence." harpers.org/archive/2013...

The AI doomers are not alright. Is it time to listen?

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.

If you're in DC next Wednesday, August 27, I'm very excited to be talking about the book with my friend @rossandersen.bsky.social at the Wharf Politics & Prose

"Not since the Red Scare .. has American science been so beholden to political ideology." I'm late to this brilliant @rossandersen.bsky.social piece, but it's a must-read (gift link): www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

20 years ago this month, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. For so many New Orleanians, our lives are demarcated by this moment. If someone ask you about an event or memory from the past, we say “was it before or after the storm?” On this twentieth anniversary, I wrote about going back home.

This reads a bit like an obituary for American science. Or a murder story from the crime beat. www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

The attack on our universities, the lack of respect for education and expertise, the attack on medical research to keep us healthy, what purpose does it serve? It makes our country weaker.

"Every scientific empire falls, but not at the same speed, or for the same reasons." Fascinating article on the history of scientific empires. Soviet science, at its zenith in the mid-1950s, collapsed entirely in the late 1980s. And now American science has begun its collapse. Gift link.

“The future of Soviet science was looking grim…One by one, he watched them start new lives elsewhere. Many…went to the U.S. At the time, America was the most compelling destination for scientific talent in the world. It would remain so until earlier this year” www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

The rapid decline of American science has few precedents in history, writes @rossandersen.bsky.social. We are witnessing an unparalleled act of self-sabotage: https://theatln.tc/6OLrjo4V

Terrific piece. A must-read for academics: "Not since the Red Scare...has American science been so beholden to political ideology." www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Such a smart and important one from @rossandersen.bsky.social

Insightful article by @rossandersen.bsky.social

Absolutely fantastic story by @andersen on how scientific excellence and leadership get squandered by nations. An important piece from @TheAtlantic www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Great read by @rossandersen.bsky.social for @theatlantic.com!

"Trump’s interference in the sciences is something new. It shares features with the science-damaging policies of Stalin and Hitler, says David Wootton, a historian of science. But in the English-speaking world, it has no precedent, he told me: “This is an unparalleled destruction from within.”

Important.

This is brilliant- terrifying, frustrating & enraging - but brilliant. It is also a warning to anyone interested in research. Unless there is a focus on maintaining broad cultural support for all types of research catastrophic change can happen rapidly www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Going to be talking nukes with brilliant colleagues at this subscriber-only event tomorrow morning: bsky.app/profile/radi...

It may surprise many that Japan has been ready to build #nuclear weapons for decades - perhaps *within a month or so* if needed. Or that it too has used this credible capability as a bargaining chip to convince the United States to commit to Japan's defence. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"For me, it was seeing the burned clothes of very small children in the museum and thinking about what happened to them and also what happened to 20,000 other children. The enormity of that suffering is hard to even hold in your mind," @rossandersen.bsky.social on his visit to Hiroshima. ⤵️

The single most consistently under appreciated issue of the year. For all the recent focus on Iran, East Asia is where the world’s fastest nuclear-bomb buildups are unfolding. “A dangerous proliferation cascade may be about to break out, right in the shadow of Hiroshima," writes Ross Andersen.

"Every moment that humanity spends with these weapons spread across the Earth, pointed at one another, is a foolish gamble with the highest-possible stakes." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

For all the recent focus on Iran, East Asia is where the world’s fastest nuclear-bomb buildups are unfolding. “A dangerous proliferation cascade may be about to break out, right in the shadow of Hiroshima,” @rossandersen.bsky.social reports. https://theatln.tc/ZYCe7JUT

An extraordinary and unsettling story, beautifully written by the great @rossandersen.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

🧵 Earlier this year, I traveled to East Asia for a story about whether South Korea and Japan will pursue nuclear weapons as China continues its nuclear build-up and the U.S. becomes a (much) less reliable ally. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

”Like almost everyone I talked with in Seoul, Heo eventually mentioned Ukraine. When the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine had a nuclear arsenal on its soil, but Bill Clinton helped persuade the Ukrainians to give it up. Not to worry, he said. The U.S. will have your back.”

“With weighty matters of career, ego, and the very nature of existence at stake, the Hubble tension has led to a bit of tension among cosmologists.” Ya think?! www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest writers to ever live. What many don’t know, is that she was also the first Black woman to become a senior editor at Random House. I wrote about a new book that discusses how she edited by day, wrote by night, and ushered in a new generation of Black writers.

When I asked a former Air Force missile-squadron commander if senior officers could refuse the order to launch nuclear weapons, he said: “We were told we can refuse illegal and immoral orders.” He paused. “But no one ever told us what *immoral* means.”

I wrote about the heat wave (and why you probably won’t remember it) gift link: www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

The first images from the $1 billion Vera C. Rubin Observatory were released today. Last year, @rossandersen.bsky.social reported that the telescope will almost certainly see some spy satellites. How to survey the cosmos without giving away national-security secrets:

Re-upping this story about how the wondrous new Vera Rubin Observatory was spy-proofed by shadowy operatives and such: bsky.app/profile/ross...

I was sorry my recent DC trip started just after @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social spoke at Politics & Prose but glad there's a video www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPe... . He's in fine form--by turns moving, lyrical, & funny--& @rossandersen.bsky.social provides a master class in the art of the interlocutor.

He was writing great stories until the very end www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/m...

An absolute master and legend

I hate to say this, but I think Mark Twain fucking lied about going to the Louvre (with all due respect): www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

“I won’t overstate how successful this experiment has been, but it’s the reason we have police forces rather than vigilantes, and safety nets rather than alms thrown haphazardly from horseback by men in tights.” - the great Cullen Murphy on feudalism’s return www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

RTM is a little-known PTSD treatment that helps patients overcome trauma without confronting it directly—a potentially huge breakthrough for veterans, if it can be vetted scientifically. Over the last few months, I investigated whether it's too good to be true. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

beautiful wonder inducing perfect weekend read from @rossandersen.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

I wrote about Adam Riess, a Nobel Prize winning cosmologist who thinks that there might be something deeply wrong with our leading theory of the universe — the very theory that he himself helped stand up www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Fun piece from @rossandersen.bsky.social about the "Hubble tension"--the problem that different methods for measuring the expansion of the universe give apparently incompatible results, which is leading some researchers to believe that something is drastically wrong with standard cosmological ideas.

Such a great story by @rossandersen.bsky.social—just read it, you will be spellbound