AI in warfare is no longer hypothetical; it's inevitable, says Palmer Luckey, an inventor and founder of the defense technology company Anduril Industries. He takes us inside the high-tech arms race to build AI-powered weapons, "killer...

How do we defend people's freedom and dignity against authoritarianism, when the "law of war" doesn't seem to apply anymore? In the face of the Russian occupation of Ukraine, human rights lawyer and Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk...

By the mid-1700s, many Plains nations survived on North America’s largest land mammals: bison. They ate its meat, made the hides into winter coats and blankets, and used the bones and horns for tools. But in the following decades,...

Based on her work for a CIA task force aimed at predicting civil wars, political scientist Barbara F. Walter examines the rise in extremism and threats to democracies around the globe -- and paints an unsettling picture of the increasing...

Why don’t we have robots taking care of our every need by now? A little history of the field of robotics might help you understand how hard it is to get machines to perform tasks, and how far we’ve come in just a few decades.

Imitating nature to build a better (or possibly more terrifying) future. We've been trying to build flapping-wing robots for hundreds of years, and now, ornithopters are finally being developed, and may be used mostly for military...

Most of us are hoping that any nuclear threats are just empty threats, and getting at the facts about ICBMs can be difficult. But what would actually happen if someone launched a nuclear weapon?

We have the technology! We can rebuild...ourselves! Human interface technologies like Google Glass, robotic prosthetics, and bionic eyes have the potential to help people recover lost abilities, but also to grant us new abilities. Will...

Historian George Dyson tells stories from the birth of the modern computer -- from its 17th-century origins to the hilarious notebooks of some early computer engineers.

Less than seven percent of people worldwide have a bachelor's degree -- and for many, this is simply because the cost of university is too high, says higher education executive Adrian K. Haugabrook. In this barrier-breaking talk, he...

In eastern Europe, in the 17th century a couple of "great powers" were coming into their own. The vast empire of Russia was modernizing under Peter the Great, and the relatively tiny state of Prussia was evolving as well. Russia (and...

In which John Green teaches you about Nationalism. Nationalism was everywhere in the 19th century, as people all over the world carved new nation-states out of old empires. Nationalist leaders changed the way people thought of themselves...

We have the technology! We can rebuild...ourselves! Human interface technologies like Google Glass, robotic prosthetics, and bionic eyes have the potential to help people recover lost abilities, but also to grant us new abilities. Will...

Between 1927 and 1941, workers blasted 450,000 tons of rock from a mountainside using chisels, jackhammers, and dynamite. Gradually, they carved out Mount Rushmore. Today, the monument draws nearly 3 million people to South Dakota's...

Imitating nature to build a better (or possibly more terrifying) future. We've been trying to build flapping-wing robots for hundreds of years, and now, ornithopters are finally being developed, and may be used mostly for military...

The Internet has transformed the front lines of war, and it's leaving governments behind. As security analyst Rodrigo Bijou shows, modern conflict is being waged online between non-state groups, activists and private corporations, and...

In April 2003, just as American troops began rolling into Baghdad, a shell smashed into the building author and war correspondent Jean-Paul Mari was reporting from. There he had a face-to-face encounter with death, beginning his...

In the early days of the Cold War, it was difficult to send and receive messages across the globe. Before the US launched its first satellite in January 1958, the military tried a creative solution: bouncing radio waves off the Moon.

Before soldiers are sent into combat, they're trained on how to function in an immensely dangerous environment. But they also need training on how to return from the battlefield to civilian life, says psychologist Hector Garcia. Applying...

After fighting overseas, 92 percent of American veterans say they want to continue their service. Meanwhile, one after another, natural disasters continue to wreak havoc worldwide. What do these two challenges have in common? In telling...

Ashraf Ghani's passionate and powerful 10-minute talk, emphasizing the necessity of both economic investment and design ingenuity to rebuild broken states, is followed by a conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on the future of...

Would you negotiate with someone you knew to be evil, to save lives? Samantha Power tells a story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to...

Art historian Bahia Shehab has long been fascinated with the Arabic script for 'no.' When revolution swept through Egypt in 2011, she began spraying the image in the streets saying no to dictators, no to military rule and no to violence.

Most of us are hoping that any nuclear threats are just empty threats, and getting at the facts about ICBMs can be difficult. But what would actually happen if someone launched a nuclear weapon?