Category: Technology

IN THE 1980S the KGB had a well-worn method for pumping disinformation around the world. “We preferred to work on genuine documents,” recalled Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general, “with some additions and changes.” That method has not changed greatly, but technology has accelerated the process. In early March a network of websites, dubbed CopyCop, …

The world is awash in pesticides. Fully 3m tonnes are thought to be sprayed onto crops worldwide every year, of which only a small fraction are needed. The excess chemicals are known to run off onto increasingly fragile land and seep into watercourses, with damaging environmental and health effects. The use of agrochemicals continues to …

IN RECENT YEARS the manufacture of blades for wind turbines has undergone a revolution, as it were. Two decades ago lengths of 40 metres or so were an achievement. Thanks largely to lighter and stronger carbon-fibre composites, the state of the art is now triple that. As turbine output is proportional to the square of …

Running around the inside of a barrel might help

Mykhailivka, a village on the right bank of the River Dnieper in Ukraine, lies dangerously close to the front line of Russia’s war on its western neighbour. Seventy years ago, however, it was the site of an excavation by Ukrainian archaeologists. There, they discovered one of the earliest known settlements of the Yamnaya culture. The …

Cartier jewellery, Louis Vuitton bags, Gucci tracksuits, private jets—Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, has a taste for the good life and is using foreign aid money to fund it. Or so Ukraine’s enemies would have you believe. As soon as Western governments started sending weapons and money to Ukraine, following Russia’s invasion in February 2022, …

Researchers and governments need to co-ordinate; tech companies need to open up

Understanding it will lead to better ways to fight it