El ser humano, hoy más que nunca, está muy desorientado al no estar adecuadamente preparado para asimilar toda una serie de alternativas que el mundo moderno le ofrece. La problemática social del planeta, donde cada vez es mayor la distancia entre ricos y pobres, el consumismo marcado en el mercado de bienes y servicios, con unas contundentes campañas publicitarias, el culto al dinero, el deseo imperativo del querer tener, por encima del querer ser, las presiones de la moda, la continua exaltación del sexo y el desenfreno de las emociones, la influencia del alcohol, las drogas enervantes, el tabaquismo y los juegos de azar entorpecen la mente de millones de hombres y mujeres y los apartan del noble camino del bien y de una adecuada evolución cósmica.

This report presents findings from workshops in which participants envisioned possible pathways for the United States economy in 2040 to meet domestic and national security needs in a future characterized by strategic competition with adversaries.

"Emerging technologies present many potential challenges to state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other agencies that own and manage the existing infrastructure. Significant uncertainty exists about which changes are most likely to occur and where the largest impacts could be, hampering an effective national alignment in policy and approach. NCHRP Research Report 1090: Risks Related to Emerging and Disruptive Transportation Technologies: A Guide, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, presents a register of risks to state and local transportation agencies and their constituents posed by four emerging technologies: electric vehicles (EVs), connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), mobility on demand/mobility as a service (MOD/MaaS), and advanced air mobility (AAM)."--Publisher's website

Researchers present a Future Logistics Concept Assessment Framework, which is a disciplined, systematic way to assess proposed future logistics concepts to meet the requirements of the National Defense Strategy. The idea is to reveal the most-promising concepts and prune the least promising before significant resources are invested. The goal is not to predict the future, but to show how a concept would fare across various potential futures.

To support distributed maritime operations in the Western Pacific, the U.S. Navy needs new approaches to logistics and the resupply and sustainment of distributed units. The authors identify challenges and recommend strategies to address them.

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine highlight the vulnerabilities of supply chains that lack diversity and are dependent on foreign inputs. This report presents a short, exploratory analysis summarizing the state of critical materials-materials essential to economic and national security-using two case studies and policies available to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to increase the resilience of its supply chains in the face of disruption. China is the largest producer and processor of rare earth oxides (REOs) worldwide and a key producer of lithium-ion battery (LIB) materials and components. China's market share of REO extraction has decreased, but it still has large influence over the downstream supply chain-processing and magnet manufacturing. Chinese market share of the LIB supply chain mirrors REO supply bottlenecks. If it desired, China could effectively cut off 40 to 50 percent of global REO supply, affecting U.S. manufacturers and suppliers of DoD systems and platforms. Although a deliberate disruption is unlikely, resilience against supply disruption and building domestic competitiveness are important. The authors discuss plausible REO disruption scenarios and their hazards and synthesize insights from a "Day After . . ." exercise and structured interviews with stakeholders to identify available policy options for DoD and the U.S. government to prevent or mitigate the effects of supply disruptions on the defense industrial base (DIB) and broader U.S. economy. They explore these policies' applicability to another critical material supply chain-LIB materials-and make recommendations for policy goals.