News Room

At least three lawmakers who sheltered in a secure room during last week’s storming of the Capitol said they have since tested positive for Covid-19, adding to fears about the virus’s spread during the attack. The lawmakers, all Democrats, said they had fled during the attack to the room where Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks. A video posted by Punchbowl News shows Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D., Del.) in the room offering masks to a group of House Republicans, who decline to put them on. The Capitol’s physician told lawmakers and staff this weekend that those who were in the room might have been exposed to someone infected with Covid-19.

One of the world’s leading experts on getting supplies to catastrophe survivors likens the nation’s struggle to get Americans vaccinated against Covid-19 to an understaffed grocery store. “From a supply chain perspective, you’ve got the production, you’ve got the distribution, it’s on the shelves and there is demand,” Philip J. Palin told NBC News. “But you don’t have enough check-out lanes and you don’t have enough checkers.” And Palin would know. The former National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine consultant and author of books like "Out of the Whirlwind: Demand and Supply After Hurricane Maria" is also the son and grandson of grocers.

John Hopkins Carey Business School professor, Tinglong Dai, on the federal government’s announcement that they are allowing states to vaccinate anyone over 65 and those with preexisting conditions.

Clay Travis: “This was the most irresponsible single piece of journalism having to do with college football that was published anywhere in the country. CBS Sports should apologize to their entire audience because they wrote a piece based on University of Illinois computer science professional Sheldon Jacobson saying ‘I guarantee someone is going to die if they play a college football season.’ He also said the FBS level would see ‘3-7 deaths’. ‘A few of them could end up in a hospital and you’ll have a small number who could die. I don’t want to sugarcoat it for you, I just want to give you the facts’… IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) has been busy in recent months, as it should be. The stakes are high when you look at the role artificial intelligence will play at nearly every level of national security in the years ahead. To underestimate the impact of AI on our nation’s safety and security is to do so at great risk. The biggest risk would be to neglect the recruitment, retention and training of elite human warfighters who will drive the successful deployment of AI. Like many in the fields of operations research, analytics, and data science, we have been closely following the work and recommendations of the NSCAI  with a keen and specific eye as veterans.