Why Combat Veterans Are Turning to Oxygen Therapy for PTSD

Top: Army Sgt. Margaux Mange experienced severe PTSD symptoms after serving in Iraq. She says hyperbaric oxygen therapy helped her symptoms significantly improve. Visual: Courtesy Margaux Mange The unapproved and, to some, unproven treatment is attracting many PTSD patients for whom other treatments have failed. BY GITIT GINAT IN 2007, United States Army Sgt. Margaux Mange was driving through Baghdad when the Humvee behind hers was hit with a bomb. She recalls grabbing a fire extinguisher and running toward the vehicle to try to rescue her best friend. But Mange was pulled back from the wreckage. Days later, Mange recalled, her left … Continue reading Why Combat Veterans Are Turning to Oxygen Therapy for PTSD

Killer robots and the banality of evil

“Lethal autonomous weapon” sounds friendlier than “killer robot.” KEY TAKEAWAYS by Jonny Thomson In Ian Fleming’s world of James Bond, Agent 007 has a “license to kill.” What this means is that Bond has the right to make a decision whether to use lethal force to accomplish a greater good. But humans are emotional and fallible. We’re error prone and biased. That begs the question: If a “license to kill” is a necessity for law enforcement, should it be given to a robot instead? This is no longer a theoretical concern. We now live in a world where warfare is … Continue reading Killer robots and the banality of evil

Geopolitics is for losers

Adolf Hitler with high-ranking Nazi officers during Operation Barbarossa, the failed offensive against the Soviet Union, 7 August 1941. Photo by Ullstein/Getty The concept of geopolitics comes from German and Russian attempts to explain defeat and reverse loss of influence Harold James, is the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies at Princeton University, professor of history and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, and an associate at the Bendheim Center for Finance. His books include, most recently, The War of Words: A Glossary of Globalization (2021) and Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises that Shaped Globalization (forthcoming, 2023). Today everyone talks geopolitics. The … Continue reading Geopolitics is for losers

Trenches in Chernobyl

An abandoned Russian trench near a military post in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, 13 September 2022. Photo by Narciso Contreras/Anadolu Agency via Getty Disturbing and inhaling radioactive dust, in their haste Russian soldiers unburied the wrecked, undead Earth itself Michael Marder is Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz, northern Spain. His books include Green Mass (2021), Philosophy for Passengers (2022) and The Phoenix Complex: A Philosophy of Nature (forthcoming, 2023). Contemporary events appear in ever-shifting configurations. They seem to be entirely contingent, their amplification on the global scale dependent on how many people are paying attention. The … Continue reading Trenches in Chernobyl

The will to fight

Throughout history, the most effective combatants have powered to victory on commitment to core values and collective resolve Scott Atran is co-founder of Artis International and emeritus director of research at France’s National Center for Scientific Research; he also holds research positions at the University of Oxford and University of Michigan, and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Talking to the Enemy (2010) and In Gods We Trust (2002). Leonidas, King of Sparta, arrived at Thermopylae with a small advance guard to hold off a massive Persian assault in 480 BCE. The invading Persian army was thousands-strong, … Continue reading The will to fight

WHAT IF RUSSIA USES NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN UKRAINE?

A look at the grim scenarios—and the U.S. playbook for each By Eric Schlosser The 12th main directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense operates a dozen central storage facilities for nuclear weapons. Known as “Object S” sites and scattered across the Russian Federation, they contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with a wide variety of explosive yields. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. According to Pavel Podvig, the director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project and a former research fellow at the Moscow Institute of … Continue reading WHAT IF RUSSIA USES NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN UKRAINE?

An ex-member of one of the world’s most dangerous mercenary groups has gone public

by ELEANOR BEARDSLEY PARIS — Marat Gabidullin’s face is lined from years of exposure to the elements, and his hair is thinning. But at 56, he has the trim physique and muscular arms of a man 30 years younger. He wears a chunky ring bearing the image of a skull. The skull is the symbol of the Wagner Group — a private Russian mercenary force believed to be financed by an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The group is fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. And it’s widely believed that at least some of … Continue reading An ex-member of one of the world’s most dangerous mercenary groups has gone public

Philosopher of the apocalypse

From the ashes of the Second World War, Günther Anders forecast a new catastrophe: technology would overwhelm its creators Audrey Borowski is postdoctoral fellow at the MCMP at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, as well as a research associate at the University of Oxford where she completed her DPhil. Her interests range widely from the early modern period to the 21st century, from Leibniz to catastrophe and the philosophy of artificial intelligence. As the commander of the weather plane that supported the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, Claude Eatherly did not feel any particular animosity … Continue reading Philosopher of the apocalypse

Tectonic shifts’: How Putin’s war will change the world

A former CIA leader imagines Russia, NATO and China in 2023 — and how the war in Ukraine will change them all. by John McLaughlin Making predictions just as the Ukraine war delivers a series of huge surprises feels like a fool’s errand. But let’s try to peer a bit through the fog of war. What got me thinking about this was the memory of a conversation with military historian Tom Ricks in the mountains of central Sicily a few years ago. We were there with Johns Hopkins University graduate students who were studying the 1943 Allied campaign against Germany. … Continue reading Tectonic shifts’: How Putin’s war will change the world

Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a Nuclear War Yet?

This post is from the Nautilus archive. The precariousness of game theory. BY AMOS ZEEBERG When opposing nations gained access to nuclear weapons, it fundamentally changed the logic of war. You might say that it made questions about war more cleanly logical—with nuclear-armed belligerents, there are fewer classic military analyses about morale, materiel, and maneuverings. Hundreds of small-scale tactical decisions dissolve into a few hugely important large-scale strategic ones, like, What happens if one side drops a nuclear bomb on its nuclear-armed opponent? Using a dangerous weapon like a nuclear bomb can of course provoke dangerous responses. If one country crosses the … Continue reading Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a Nuclear War Yet?