IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876446
John R. Allen;Peter L. Levin
{"title":"An Undo Button for Nuclear Armageddon","authors":"John R. Allen;Peter L. Levin","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876446","url":null,"abstract":"IN 1956 HENRY KISSINGER speculated in Foreign Affairs about how the nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union could force national security officials into a terrible dilemma. His thesis was that the United States risked sending a signal to potential aggressors that, faced with conflict, defense officials would have only two choices: settle for peace at any price, or retaliate with thermonuclear ruin. Not only had “victory in an all-out war become technically impossible,” Kissinger wrote, but in addition, it could “no longer be imposed at acceptable cost.”","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"26-31"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876449
Edd Gent
{"title":"Johnny Ray Austin: Curious Engineers Make Great Product Managers","authors":"Edd Gent","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876449","url":null,"abstract":"Engineers are great at solving problems that arise when creating new products. But deciding what new products to build is often just as big a challenge. That decision-making process is a task software engineer Johnny Ray Austin has found himself increasingly drawn to as his career has progressed.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"17-18"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10876449","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876755
Andrew Moseman
{"title":"Engineers Transform Transformers to Save the Power Grid: A Global Shortage of This EsΣΣsential Grid Tech Bottlenecks Energy Projects","authors":"Andrew Moseman","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876755","url":null,"abstract":"To Nick de Vries, chief technology officer at the solar-energy developer Silicon Ranch, a transformer is like an interstate on-ramp: It boosts the voltage of the electricity that his solar plants generate to match the voltage of grid transmission lines. “They're your ticket to ride,” says de Vries. “If you don't have your high-voltage transformer, you don't have a project.” Recently, this ticket has grown much harder to come by. The demand for transformers has spiked worldwide, and so the wait time to get a new transformer has doubled from 50 weeks in 2021 to nearly two years now, according to a report from Wood MacKenzie, an energy-analytics firm. The wait for the more specialized large power transformers (LPTs), which step up voltage from power stations to transmission lines, is up to four years. Costs have also climbed by 60 to 80 percent since 2020.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"20-25"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876756
Willie D. Jones
{"title":"Stan Thompson: The Visionary Behind Hydrogen-Powered Trains","authors":"Willie D. Jones","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876756","url":null,"abstract":"When he retired from BellSouth Telecommunications in 1996, H. Stan Thompson Jr. didn't anticipate he'd become a prime mover behind making hydrogen the fuel of choice for rail transit.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"19-19"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10876756","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876749
Stephen Cass
{"title":"Press for Perfect Cryptography > The Pad-O-Matic Prints One-Time Pads at the Touch of a Button","authors":"Stephen Cass","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876749","url":null,"abstract":"Like many nerds, I have an interest in cryptography rooted in the wartime exploits of codebreaker and Ur-computer scientist Alan Turing. So I've followed with interest IEEE Spectrum's reporting on the burgeoning field of postquantum cryptography. These techniques are designed to frustrate even the immense potential of quantum computing, a technology light-years beyond the electromechanical bombe that Turing used to break the German Enigma cipher. I'm sure those new cryptographic methods will work just fine. But there is one encryption scheme, known even in Turing's time, that is mathematically secure against not just quantum computers but any computer that will ever be invented: the one-time pad.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"14-16"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876757
Ivan Amato
{"title":"A Spy Satellite You've Never Heard of Helped Win the Cold War: The Parcae Project Revolutionized Electronic Eavesdropping","authors":"Ivan Amato","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876757","url":null,"abstract":"IN THE EARLY 1970s, the Cold War had reached a particularly frigid moment, and U.S. military and intelligence officials had a problem. The Soviet Navy was becoming a global maritime threat-and the United States did not have a global ocean-surveillance capability. Adding to the alarm was the emergence of a new Kirov class of nuclear-powered guided-missile battle cruisers, the largest Soviet vessels yet. For the United States, this situation meant that the perilous equilibrium of mutual assured destruction, MAD, which so far had dissuaded either side from launching a nuclear strike, could tilt in the wrong direction.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"40-47"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876754
Edd Gent
{"title":"AI's Green Thumb: Agritech Apps are Providing Personalized Advice to India's Small Farmers","authors":"Edd Gent","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10876754","url":null,"abstract":"Farming in India is tough work—and it's only getting tougher. Water shortages, a rapidly changing climate, disorganized supply chains, and difficulty accessing credit make every growing season a calculated gamble. But farmers like Harish B. are finding that new AI-powered tools can take some of the unpredictability out of the endeavor. (Editor's note: Instead of a surname, Indian given names are often combined with initials that can represent the name of the person's father or village.)","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 2","pages":"32-39"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143361390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}