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Barely one day passed in 2024 before another reminder was issued of one of the most serious developments in national security and terrorism — the increasing prevalence of political assassinations around the world.
In South Korea, Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, was stabbed in the neck on Jan. 2, by an assailant seemingly motivated by a corruption scandal surrounding Lee. The leader survived the attack.
The attempt was just the latest in a long — and growing — line of assassination attempts against political leaders.
The United States has avoided a successful high-profile assassination during the recent escalation in domestic political violence, but not for the lack of trying. In 2022 alone, serious plots targeted Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In both cases, the would-be assassins made it all the way to their target’s home. Of note, these incidents underscore that assassination threats are not reserved by any one political ideology — they are weaponized by extremists of all stripes. Public service in the United States today often features a deluge of threats as an occupational hazard.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to diagnose the cause of this apparent rise in assassination attempts targeting various nations.
In the United States, to be sure, norms of civility have frayed, driven in no small part by a former president who seems to delight in threatening violence against his political opponents. In September 2022, after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell worked with Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that his former congressional ally “has a DEATH WISH.”
More recently, Trump fumed over former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley’s conversation with representatives of the Chinese government after the Jan. 6 riots, adding, “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Such language dehumanizes political rivals, and may in turn demystify the act of killing them.
Other explanations include the rising prevalence of conspiracy theories targeting politicians. In my new co-authored book, “God, Guns, and Sedition,” we explore the rise in assassination threats surrounding both the COVID pandemic and 2020 presidential election, finding that both moments galvanized conspiracy theories that placed Democratic (and even centrist Republican) politicians in the crosshairs. Indeed, the gallows erected outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, combined with the crowd’s promise to “Hang Mike Pence,” was evidence of this rising trend.
An even more concerning explanation might simply be a question of precedence. Recent trends in terrorist tactics and targeting, such as the ISIS-inspired van rammings that struck cities such as Nice and New York and the far-right lone actors who opened fire in places of worship, have proven once again that terrorists learn from one another. In other words, the pioneers who claimed the lives of Shinzo Abe and Fernando Villavicencio might ultimately have inspired others to follow in their footsteps.
With this dark possibility in mind, politicians must be prepared to spend greater resources on their protection. According to the Washington Post, “Candidates running for House and Senate offices increased campaign spending on security by more than 500 percent between the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms.”
But there is also a more optimistic possibility: Assassinations are typically chosen by “accelerationist” extremists who are particularly desperate to change the course of history, and should also, therefore, be interpreted precisely as a reflection of the strength of liberal democratic order. The most critical counterterrorism measure, then, is to continue reinforcing democratic institutions, including free elections and the free press, that isolate extremism to the fringes of society.
A group of Japanese scientists has successfully filmed plants communicating and warning others about potential dangers in real-time, making a breakthrough in an observation first documented in the early 1980s.
What they observed: Published in the journal Nature Communications in October 2023, the research team, led by molecular biologist Masatsugu Toyota from Japan's Saitama University, successfully captured undamaged plants sending defense responses to nearby plants after sensing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are produced by other plants in response to mechanical damages or insect attacks.
How the study was conducted: The team, which included Yuri Aratani, a Ph.D. student at the university, and Takuya Uemura, a postdoctoral researcher, attached an air pump to a container filled with leaves and caterpillars and to another chamber containing Arabidopsis thaliana, a common weed from the mustard family. The Arabidopsis was genetically modified to make their cells fluoresce green after detecting calcium ions, which serve as stress messengers. The team then used a fluorescence microscope to monitor the signals the undamaged plants released after receiving VOCs from the damaged leaves.
Why it matters: Plant communication was first observed in a study in 1983, igniting discussions in the scientific community since.
“We have finally unveiled the intricate story of when, where and how plants respond to airborne 'warning messages' from their threatened neighbors,” Toyota said of their recent study. “This ethereal communication network, hidden from our view, plays a pivotal role in safeguarding neighboring plants from imminent threats in a timely manner.”
At the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) held from January 15–19, 2024, Bill Gates has sparked skepticism with his recent statements about the future of vaccines.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan, Gates expressed confidence in the development of next-generation vaccines that promise longer duration, broader coverage, and the shift towards needle-free administration.
“We make sure that for all these vaccines, there’s enough capacity; there’s competition. So the prices keep going down, and we will have new vaccines,” said Gates.
“We’ll have a TB vaccine, malaria vaccine, HIV vaccine, and even the things like COVID vaccines; we need to make them have longer duration, more coverage. And we’re going to change instead of using a needle to use a little patch. So the pandemic really highlighted that we’ve been underinvested in those innovations, and our partners in India are part of how we’re going to get these breakthrough products done,” he added.
Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently invested $23.6 million in U.S.-based Micron Biomedical to develop needle-free vaccine technology, emphasized the importance of affordable, accessible, and innovative vaccine solutions.
This technology will use a patch-like device with dissolvable microneedles.
Micron Biomedical, a life science company developing first-in-class dissolvable microarray-based products that simplify and improve the transport, storage, and administration of drugs and vaccines, today announced a $23.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will fund mass production of needle-free vaccines.
The manufacturing facility will enable commercialization of the first microarray technology-based measles-rubella vaccine, indicated for children as young as 9 months, once approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities following additional clinical study.
In low- and middle-income countries, measles remains a leading cause of death, primarily due to limited access to vaccines that require refrigeration during transport and storage and clinicians to administer them. Micron is developing a needle-free version of the measles-rubella (MR) vaccine based on its microarray technology.
The technology reduces the need for a cold chain and allows a community health worker to vaccinate a child within minutes by applying the technology to the skin and pressing a button that confirms administration. The administration of the vaccine is virtually pain-free.
President Javier Milei of Argentina took the World Economic Forum by storm with a provocative keynote speech on Wednesday.
The libertarian leader delivered a blistering critique of socialism and a fervent endorsement of capitalist principles before a crowd of the world’s most influential political and economic figures.
Milei, having been introduced by Klaus Schwab himself, then proceeded to confront the elites with his fiery speech.
The 53-year-old president did not hold back in his rebuke of the West’s slide toward collectivism — a political theory associated with communism.
“I am here today to tell you that the West is in danger,” warned Milei.
“It is in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West have been co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and, consequently, to poverty,” he added.
He lambasted Western leaders for abandoning the principles of freedom and succumbing to various forms of collectivism, including state interventionism, radical feminism, abortion, social justice movements, and population control.
“The leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. Collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world rather they are the root cause.”
“All that this radical feminism agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder the economic process, giving a job to bureaucrats who have not contributed anything to society.”
“Examples: ministries of work of women or international organizations devoted to promoting this agenda. Another conflict presented by socialists is that of humans against nature, claiming that we human beings damage the planet, which should be protected at all costs, even going as far as advocating for population control mechanisms or the bloody abortion agenda.”
In his scathing attack on socialism, Milei didn’t mince words: “Socialism is, always and everywhere, an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed wherever it’s been tried.”
He linked socialism to economic, social, and cultural failures and accused it of being responsible for the deaths of over a hundred million people.
In his speech, the president championed free-market capitalism as the only solution to combat poverty.
Turning his attention to the business community, Milei extolled them as “heroes” in the face of a predatory political class and state-dependant entities.
“Do not surrender to a political class that only seeks power and privileges. You are social benefactors,” he urged, defending the moral righteousness of their ambitions and profits.
Milei reaffirmed Argentina’s stance as a staunch ally for those sharing his views, boldly stating, “The state is not the solution. The state is the problem.”
He concluded his address with a resounding battle cry that has become his trademark: “Viva la libertad, carajo!” (“Long live freedom, damn it!”).
Correction: This was not President Javier Milei’s first appearance at the World Economic Forum. He previously participated in a panel at the 2014 WEF event in Panama.
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