DHS updates Ready.gov…sort of.
Earlier this month, The Department of Homeland Security added two new sections to the Ready.gov website, one for people with disabilities and another for seniors. However, when you take a close look at them, you will notice that all they have done is shuffled the information they already had on the site onto two new pages. There is no new information on the web pages themselves.
What they have also done is supplied two new downloadable brochures that have very good information for seniors and people with disabilities. Kudos DHS! It is absolutely puzzling to me, however, that they have not taken the information from their brochures and simply added it to the new web pages. It would take very little time to do this and having two different sets of information on the site, one on the web page itself and one in the brochure, will almost certainly lead to confusion.
We applaud their efforts to improve their site and hope they will move quickly to rectify the shortcomings we identified in our previous analysis. We have formally offered DHS the content of reallyready.org at no cost, but have yet to hear word if they are going to take us up on our offer.
Finally, we have received several suggestions that we change the graphics on our nuclear threat page from a reactor because it implies that nuclear reactors pose a threat of nuclear explosion. This is an excellent point. The graphic was taken directly from ready.gov and we have changed it on our site to reflect the reality of a nuclear threat.
It is difficult to assess from photos whether the Sentinel missile is longer or wider overall than the Minuteman, but the Sentinel clearly has a thicker second stage, which could potentially contribute to the missile’s extended range.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.
As humans expand our geographic reach, encroach on untouched natural territories, and interact more with animal populations, we will encounter novel zoonotic diseases that threaten the human body. The sooner we act to address these risks, the better.
“One thing became increasingly clear: AI doesn’t simply introduce a new category of risk. It changes the speed, scale, complexity, and interaction of risks that already exist.”