Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** Sep. 9, 2026
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25 Years After 9/11: Lessons for Securing the Homeland
Friday marks 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks transformed the United States--and the world.
RAND experts are reflecting on one of the most enduring aspects of that transformation: what we've learned about homeland security in the quarter-century since the attacks. In a new Q&A, ten RAND researchers discuss how the threat landscape has evolved, the impact of the Transportation Security Administration, emerging counterterrorism capabilities, and more.
Which lesson feels most urgent today? For senior policy researcher David Luckey, it's how 9/11 exposed the dangers of a failure of imagination, "specifically the inability to anticipate how adversaries might exploit emerging or unexplored vulnerabilities."
That lesson resonates 25 years on, he says, as the world grapples with many new threats. "Our greatest asset is the ability to anticipate, adapt, and act--before the unimaginable becomes reality."
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Making AI Safer for Teens
OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT for Teens, which the company says automatically applies additional protections to teen accounts. That's an improvement over requiring parents to activate safety settings, says RAND's Ryan McBain. (After all, millions of young people seek mental health advice from AI, often without their parents' knowledge.) But he emphasizes that this rests on an unforgiving premise: that OpenAI can actually identify teen users. The company should publish a clear plan for answering three critical questions, McBain says. Can the system reliably identify teens? How safe and appropriate are ChatGPT for Teens responses? And does the teen experience change what younger users actually do?
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What Do Public Data Tell Us About Corporate Support for Veterans?
A new RAND report analyzes publicly available data on what S&P 500 companies say about veteran support, how much their foundations give to veteran causes, and the hiring of protected veterans among federal contractors. The findings reveal some meaningful insights. For instance, what companies say about veterans only weakly aligns with how they give and hire. And corporate foundations direct little of their grantmaking to veteran causes.
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** RAND Recommends
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- Most clicked last week: how tax policy could help promote employment in the AI era.
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- How might Ukraine's military evolve in the years ahead? RAND Europe's Jacob Parakilas and Oliver Gill of LSE IDEAS explore two distinct scenarios.
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- Today's AI models are not yet capable of designing viruses that infect humans. But the time to prepare for that possibility is now, says RAND's Steph Guerra.
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** Events
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Veterans' Earnings in the Civilian Labor Market
Thursday, Sep. 17, 2026 (Online)
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The State of Psychedelics in America
Wednesday, Sep. 30, 2026 (Online)
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** Policy Minded, RAND's Flagship Podcast
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On Policy Minded, we pick the brains of the world's top policy experts. In each episode, RAND researchers join us for conversations that go beyond the headlines--bringing you insights you can't find anywhere else.
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