DARPA's made all types of robots, from "Big Dog" to "Wild Cat," and soft robots to flying robots. Their latest creepy invention is a robotic "cheetah" that can run, bound, and jump obstacles in its path all while running on a quiet electric motor, giving the robot its stealthy cat-like quality.

The key to the robotic cheetah's stealth and agility is how hard its mechanical feet hit the ground, MIT researchers say in their latest video. The researchers working on the project, funded by DARPA, have developed an algorithm that enables them to control how much force the animal's feet exert when they contact the ground, which any sprinter can tell you relates to how fast you go down the track. The higher the force, the faster your speed.

"This is kind of a Ferrari in the robotics world, like, we have to put all the expensive components and make it really that instinctive. That's the only way to get that speed," MIT professor Sangbae Kim told the Associated Press. Kim leads MIT's Biomimetic Robotics Lab, which designed the robot.

With better control of how hard the cheetah's feet hit the ground, researchers found that it could run and bound on rough terrain like grassy fields while maintain its speed and balance. Balance is also an important factor in clearing obstacles, which the robotic cheetah does without losing a beat.

You may have noticed that DARPA's latest animal-inspired robot does not move as gracefully as a cheetah sprinting after its prey. That's because the engineers at MIT are still perfecting the robot's motion at high speeds. 

"When the robot is running, at every step, we calculate the appropriate amount of the force to the legs so that the robot can balance itself," MIT research scientist Hae-Won Park, who wrote the complex algorithm used to control the cheetah, told AP.

Cheetahs gallop their prey down, but robo-cheetah is not there, yet. Instead, it bounds across fields. When an animal bounds, it lifts its back two feet off the ground right as its front two feet simultaneously make contact. This way, the animal always has two feet on the ground. See how the robotic cheetah bounds in this gif:

The next stage in speed is galloping, when the two front feet and back feet separate, hitting the ground at different times. During each gallop, all four feet leave the ground as the animal flies through the air, like the real cheetah in this gif:

Once the MIT researchers perfect the robotic cheetah's bounding capabilities, it should not be difficult for them to split the legs and gain more speed, according to Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

Right now, robotic cheetah can reach speeds up to 10 mph with its quiet electric motor, and researchers anticipate that it could top out at 30 mph. That's faster than Usain Bolt's record sprint in 2009, he ran the 100 meter dash in 9.69 seconds, corresponding to a speed of 23 mph.

Check out the full video, uploaded by MIT to YouTube:

Check out more awesome animal robots at DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation Program (M3) and Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) Program sites.

Harrison Jacobs contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: This Crazy Robot Keeps Going Even After Being Run Over And Lit On Fire

SEE ALSO: Creepy WildCat Robot Will Chase You Down And Haunt Your Dreams

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An American Air Force pilot was killed on November 30 when his F-16 Fighting Falcon crashed shortly after takeoff from a base in the Middle East, according to a report from from US Central Command.

The incident was not combat-related and did not occur in Iraq or Syria, according to the CENTCOM notice. But the US has several Middle Eastern bases supporting aerial efforts against ISIS elsewhere in the region.

These include Al Udeid in the Qatari desert, CENTCOM's forward headquarters in the Middle East; Al Dhafra Air Base, a base in the United Arab Emirates that hosts American aircraft; and the major base in Bahrain that hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.

If the pilot or aircraft was involved in ongoing anti-ISIS operations, this would not be the first American death that is in some way related to the three-month old Operation Inherent Resolve.

In October, the death of a Marine Corporal who disappeared at sea after bailing from a disabled MV-22 Osprey was classified as related to Operation Inherent Resolve. A Marine lance corporal was also killed in a non-combat-related incident in Baghdad in late October.

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Tensions between Russia and NATO have continued to intensify as the conflict in Ukraine grinds on. 

Both NATO and Russia have exchanged barbs, criticizing the other side for its role in a conflict that has already killed more than 4,300 people. NATO has repeatedly said that Russia has been providing direct and indirect military aid to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has accused NATO of overthrowing the previous Ukrainian government, backing fascists in Ukraine, and expanding the organization in alleged violation of earlier agreements.

In response to Russia's frequent claims, NATO has released a fact sheet that is also available in Russian and Ukrainian.

This isn't the first time that the world's most powerful military alliance or its members have directly engaged with Moscow online. NATO released a similar fact-sheet in April. And Canada's NATO delegation caustically trolled the Kremlin after the country's invasion of eastern Ukraine in August, with a map reminding Russia of where its borders ended.

We have highlighted the most interesting facts that NATO has sought to clarify below. 

Russian Claim: NATO promised it would not expand east into the Baltics and eastern Europe following German reunification. 

NATO Rebuttal: Though often repeated as fact, the NATO fact sheet notes that there's no real evidence that such a quid pro quo was ever reached. Indeed, it couldn't have been reached — when Germany was re-unified in 1990, many of the countries targeted for NATO expansion later on were still under Soviet domination or were members of the rival Warsaw Pact.

Per NATO, even Mikhail Gorbachev, then the Soviet premier, says that the "neither NATO nor Soviet leaders ever brought up the issue of NATO expansion."

Russian Claim: NATO enlargement has destabilized the Balkans 

NATO Rebuttal: This is another frequent Russian claim, often tied to the idea that NATO waged aggressive war against Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s (see next item).

In fact, the NATO fact-check claims, the alliance's Balkan members (Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, and Greece) have enjoyed enhanced security and democratic development thanks to their membership in the organization.

Russian Claim: Russian action in Crimea was identical to NATO action in Crimea 

NATO Rebuttal: The accusation that the NATO states waged an aggressive invasion of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis of 1999 is a common Russian talking point used to justify Moscow's annexation of Crimea.

In fact, NATO notes, allied military action in Kosovo was the result of nearly a decade of failed attempts at peaceably solving a longstanding and violent dispute between Serbia's oppressive and human rights-abusing government and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

Crimea, on the other hand, was never in dispute and never the focal point of a long-running crisis — until Russia annexed the peninsula in March, that is.

Russian Claim: The Ukrainian government is illegitimate and is dominated by Nazis and fascists

NATO Rebuttal: "Ukraine's president was elected with a clear majority in May 25 in an election that the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) characterized as free and fair," the fact-check notes.

As for those Nazis and fascists that Moscow seems so worried about, "far right parties received less than 5%, the legal limit for parties to become represented in parliament."

SEE ALSO: Here are 2 ways Russia's provocative stunts could lead to war

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North Korea is attempting to develop submarines capable of launching nuclear armed ballistic missiles, Debalina Ghoshal writes for USNI News. 

North Korea is developing a new class of submarines based on the designs of the Soviet-era Golf-II class submarine.

Although these vessels have been surpassed by later US and European models and are basically obsolete by modern standards, North Korea is gaining technological insight from the submarines that could lead to a functioning ballistic missile vessel. 

As Ghoshal writes: 

[T]hese submarines would be able to fire ballistic missiles. In fact, reports confirm that Pyongyang already is developing a vertical-launch system for submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Raising further concerns about that is the fact that North Korean ballistic missiles could be armed with nuclear warheads.

This interest in a sea-based missile capability comes not long after a top US general claimed that North Korea had made progress on miniaturizing its nuclear warheads, which are widely thought to be too large and unwieldy to deliver by the ballistic missiles Pyongyang currently possesses.

In October, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of US forces on the Korean peninsula, warned that North Korea had developed "the capability to miniaturize a device at this point and they have the technology to actually deliver what they say they have."

If North Korea completes its reserve engineering of the Golf-II submarines, the Hermit Kingdom could field a fleet of nuclear-capable submarines that could function as an additional deterrent. 

There's reason for skepticism, though. For the foreseeable future, the threat of nuclear retaliation from North Korea remains isolated to the North East Asian region, and that's assuming its nuclear weapons are small enough to be practically deliverable. North Korea lacks a proven capability of launching a missile that could strike the continental US, although the country could possibly target US forces stationed in bases throughout the Asia Pacific region. 

But even in North East Asia, the threat from North Korean submarines remains low. Pyongyang is years away from creating a fully credible sea-based nuclear fleet, and that's assuming they master nuclear miniaturization. And after construction of this hypothetical fleet, North Korea's submarines would be outdated and potentially easy prey for more advanced submarine hunting equipment. Pyongyang would still be running a North Korean version of an outmoded Soviet model.

"Because the submarines have been reverse-engineered from the obsolete Golf-class submarine," Ghoshal writes for USNI News, "there is a chance that the submarine could be defeated by modern anti-submarine techniques." 

SEE ALSO: North Korea could easily target South Korea's largest airport

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ISIS blitzed through Iraq and Syria over the summer, seizing Iraq's second-largest city, ethnically cleansing entire minority groups, and executing US and British hostages.

At times, the group appeared to have a less-than-strategic approach to holding its suddenly Belgium-sized domain, baiting a US-led coalition into airstrikes, and opening fronts against the Syrian, Iraqi, and Kurdish militaries.

But as a new report from Charles Lister of the Brookings Institution's Doha Centerdemonstrates, one big reason the group has managed to hold out is that it has been able to run an surprisingly effective state — albeit one that is propped up on kidnapping ransoms and black market oil sales and which holds power through violence and coercion.

ISIS  claimed the mantle of statehood, declaring itself a "Caliphate" and changing its official name to simply the Islamic State. Through a combination of over-the-top cruelty backed through less grotesque methods of institutional capacity building, they've partially delivered on this foundational and grandiose claim. Indeed, part of what makes ISIS such a grimly pioneering organization is its connection of its jihadist legitimacy to its territorial holdings.

While Al Qaeda is a sometimes-loosely constructed transnational network committed to warfare against western targets around the world, ISIS is a rigid hierarchy associated with a single piece of land that it claims to rule in accordance with traditional Islamic principles. From this vast safe-haven, ISIS has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars and built an army of 31,000 fighters, according to Lister's report.

Lister's report recounts several surprising ways in which ISIS has turned itself into a functioning state strong enough to survive the numerous pressures it faces and deepen its claim to a "Caliphate."

ISIS is a "tightly controlled and bureaucratic organization." ISIS operates an efficient hierarchy, beginning with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and a small executive-level team consisting of an advisor and one deputy each for Iraq and Syria. Below them are "an eight-man cabinet and a military council of at most 13 men."

And even further down are local military commanders, male and female religious police, tax and zakat (charity) collectors, and non-military offices that even include a consumer protection bureau in Raqqa.

As Lister explains, ISIS is a sprawling yet efficiently run organization with a fairly stable chain of command.

There are hundreds of former professional military officers in ISIS's ranks. Including a couple of very experienced ones: "Abu Ali al-Anbari, the chief of Syria operations, was a major general in the Iraqi Army and Fadl Ahmad Abdullah al-Hiyali (Abu Muslim al-Turkmani), the chief of operations in Iraq, was a lieutenant colonel in Iraqi Military Intelligence and a former officer in the Iraqi Special Forces," writers Lister.

And that's on top of as many as 1,000 “medium and top level field commanders, who all have technical, military, and security experience,” according to ISIS documents found in June that Lister cites.

ISIS not only has a corps of trained officers to organize its 31,000 fighters. They're also capable of attracting and keeping individuals who fought for secular state militaries — a group which likely includes Sunnis who agree with ISIS's sectarian agenda without buying into its radical jihadist ideology.

Part of ISIS's appeal, Lister explains, lies in its ability to present itself as the purest and most legitimate expression of Sunniism in Iraq and Syria, something that widens the group's appeal beyond just hardcore jihadists.

ISIS has sophisticated force management that resembles that of a formal military.  Lister explains that ISIS fighters have "appeared administratively akin to a nation-state's army, with units rotating between active frontline duty, days off in 'liberated' areas and other deployments 'on base.'"

SEE ALSO: Terrorists commandeered an Egyptian Navy missile boat in November

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The story of last week was that OPEC, at its annual meeting in Vienna on Thursday, decided not to cut oil production despite the recent price freefalls in the energy market. 

But there was something else going on at the meeting, which didn't get as much attention: who represented Libya. 

The North African country is an OPEC member, but currently has two goverments, which both believed they should be entitled to send delegates to the meeting.

Here's the story, from Reuters: 

Libya has two cabinets and parliaments vying for legitimacy since a rival group took control of the capital Tripoli in August, installing its own prime minister and assembly and forcing the country's internationally recognized prime minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, to move his operations to the east of the country.

The United Nations and world powers have not recognized rival Prime Minister Omar al-Hassi, but his political alliance controls major ministries in Tripoli.

While some people expected that OPEC wouldn't take sides, in the end, OPEC followed the lead of the United Nations and extended an invitation to the delegates of al-Thinni, further legitimizing his government, according to Steve Fox at Middle East Eye.

Libya's actual role in the meeting was relatively small, since it was one of three countries that OPEC exempted from any production cut decision prior to the meeting on November 27th. Production is already down more than 70% from its average rate before Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown. This year Libya is producing about 437,000 barrels a day— down from 1.55 million a day in 2010, according to Bloomberg.

Libya's oil industry is screwed. And its oil industry is its economy. According to OPEC's own data, oil is 95% of total exports.

In part because of dramatic production cuts, Libya doesn't have a hope for making any money on oil this year, anyway. According to Reuters, oil revenues in Libya will fall to "15 billion Libyan dinars ($12 billion) this year, down from 40 billion dinars in 2013." 

Oil would have to be six times higher than it is for the country to be in the black. Check out that breakeven price: 

SEE ALSO: Low Oil Prices Put The World Economy At Risk In The Longer Term

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China announced a ban on puns and casual alteration of idioms last week, warning that wordplay could lead to “cultural and linguistic chaos."

If you think that sounds Orwellian, then you're right.

The dystopian government in "1984" strictly limited the use of language to prohibit puns and all forms of double meaning. Called Newspeak, this system was central to state control.

As explained in the book's appendix:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

China suggested more lighthearted reasons for banning puns in its official announcement, criticizing a provincial ad campaign that punned off the similar words for "perfection" and "magnificent Shanxi."

But everyone knows there are other puns that China is more worried about.

Quartz's Nikhil Sonnad points out that a recent pun in circulation connects Chinese president Xi Jinping to marijuana.

China actually bans hundreds of terms. Among the most notable is "May 35," which arose as a trick to get around censorship of "June 4," which is the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Mass civil unrest remains one of the biggest risks in China, with the "Umbrella Revolution" in Hong Kong providing a teaser of what could come. Aggressive censorship could either hold back or spur a potential revolt.

DON'T MISS: 16 facts about China that will blow your mind

SEE ALSO: George Orwell's biggest fear went far beyond Big Brother

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Since the death of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in 1993, the Colombian cocaine industry has undergone a dramatic shift.

Gone are the days of lavish spending, mega-cartels, and murder-counts greater than 20,000 per year. Instead, the cartels have transformed into smaller units that efficiently manage much of the world's cocaine without a lot of the high-profile violence that has been associated with the trade in the past.

Vice News correspondent Monica Villamizar daringly traveled to the center of the cocaine trade in the Colombian city of Medellin to get an up-close look inside the day-to-day lives of "foot soldiers,""cuchos," and drug lords who run the country's modern cocaine industry. We've broken out the highlights, but click the link above to see the full video.

After being blindfolded with sunglasses and bandages for the drive to a secret stash house, Villamizar got her first glance at the operation. Driven by members of the gang, she was told to tell the police she had eye surgery if she got pulled over.

Via Monica Villamizar/Vice News

The Vice crew had to give up their phones to visit the stash house. The guy who drove them to the location was a hit man who had just gotten out of jail.

Via Monica Villamizar/Vice News

Although this enterprise focused on cocaine, the distributors had plenty of marijuana they were bagging to sell.

Via Monica Villamizar/Vice News

Ashton Carter, the former theoretical physicist who was briefly second-in-command at the Pentagon under Chuck Hagel, will be President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed Hagel as secretary of defense, according to multiple outlets, initially reported by CNN and confirmed by Bloomberg.

"Barring any last minute complications, Ash Carter will be President Barack Obama's choice as the new Secretary of Defense," several US administration officials reportedly told CNN.

The selection comes after numerous front-runners for the job took themselves out of consideration, including former Pentagon policy head Michele Flournoy and Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island).

Carter was "responsible for the day-to-day management" of the Defense Department's 2.2 million employees during his 10 months as deputy secretary of defense under Hagel, but he resigned in October 2013 — possibly because of his discomfort with being passed over for the Pentagon's top job at the beginning of Obama's second term.

During the first Obama administration, Carter spent two years as "the Pentagon's technology and weapons-buying chief,"according to Fox News. Carter was influential in reorganizing US Cyber Command during his time at the Pentagon, and he helped to push cybersecurity as a priority for national security.

Carter has largely served in behind-the-scenes-type roles as the Pentagon, including as a high-ranking international security policy official at the Defense Department under President Bill Clinton. Although likely a somewhat unknown figure outside of political circles, Carter is widely considered to be qualified for the job and has the approval of at least one Republican vocal on national security issues: On Nov. 24, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) called Carter as well as Reed and Flournoy "solid choices for [an] important position."

Hagel was reportedly forced to resign on Nov. 24 over disagreements with the White House regarding its handing of the US-led campaign against the Islamic State militant group, along with more general policy disagreements over the US approach to the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

"We have no presidential personnel announcements at this time, and not going to speculate on any before the president announces it," White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told Business Insider.

NOW WATCH: Here Are 5 Big Things Paul Krugman Says He Got Wrong Over The Years

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Color photography may not have been widely used until the 1930s, but that hasn’t stopped an active group of Redditors from looking to change the past. On the Colorized History Subreddit, Redditors use photo manipulation to add color to historical black-and-white images. 

Two of the most prolific users, Mads Dahl Madsen and Jordan J. Lloyd (who has since started Dynachrome, a digital image restoration agency), have done US history a favor by taking a number of the Civil War photographs available at the Library of Congress and turning them into realistic and beautiful looking color. 

As photography was not invented until the 1820s, the Civil War was one of the first wars to be photographed. Famous photographers such as Mathew Brady and his apprentice Alexander Gardner made it their duty to capture the country’s tragic war for posterity, with a variety of portraits of officers and soldiers and scenes of daily life and the aftermath of battles. At the time, cameras were not able to accurately capture motion, so there are few, if any, photos of actual battles in action.  

This photo depicts President Ulysses S. Grant (pictured in the center, at the time a lieutenant general), his friend Brigadier General John Rawlins (left), and an unknown lieutenant colonel in 1865.

Union Captain Cunningham poses next to the command tent in Bealeton, Va., 1863. Cunningham was a member of the staff of Brigadier General Thomas F. Meagher, who commanded a primarily Irish contingent during the Civil War.

This photo by Mathew Brady, the most famous Civil War photographer, portrays three Confederate prisoners at Gettysburg, Pa. in 1863.

This photo by Alexander Gardner, originally Brady's apprentice, depicts Union Colonel James H. Childs (middle, standing) and several other officers at Westover Landing, Va. in 1862. Childs was later killed at the Battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day in American history. A total of 22,717 soldiers were either killed, injured, or missing in action that day.

This is Major General Ambrose Burnside, the commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. He is best known for leading the army to a crushing defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg and for his distinctive facial hair, which later became known as the — you guessed it — sideburn.

This photograph by Andrew Gardner depicts the staff of Brigadier General Andrew Porter in 1862. George Custer (of the Battle of Little Bighorn fame) is shown reclining next to a dog on the right.

This is a portrait of General William Tecumseh Sherman in civilian clothes. During Sherman's famous "March to the Sea," the Union Army destroyed nearly everything in its path, both military and civilian, on its way to Savannah, Ga. 

Confederate General Robert E. Lee at his home in Richmond, Va. less than a week after surrendering. 

SEE ALSO: Welcome To The Gorgeous Region Of Afghanistan That Has Been Untouched By Decades Of War

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When OPEC decided not to cut production last week, the move was widely seen as Saudi Arabia declaring war on American shale producers.

But there's likely to be a lot of collateral damage. Venezuela is going to get slammed by dropping prices. Libya was getting killed even when prices were over $100 a barrel.

Now, RBC Capital Markets's Helima Croft is warning that Nigeria might actually be the country most at risk for civil unrest related to oil price declines.

"In a country plagued by deep regional and religious divisions, oil revenue is literally the glue that binds the fractious elites together," Croft writes.

There are two major sources of violence in Nigeria: In the north, Boko Haram and Ansaru (influenced by ISIS of late). In the south, there are the Christian militias, which reached a tentative peace agreement with the government a few years ago. That agreement expires next year.

Further, writes strategist Emad Mostaque in a note, "Nigeria has been meaningfully below its faceplate production capacity for a number of years. The primary reasons for this are local instability (particularly in 2008 with MEND), decaying infrastructure and graft." 

In a separate email to Business Insider, Mostaque noted that "Nigeria is a... porous country with billions going missing each month between NNPC [Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation] invoices and receipts alone..."

The country's budget is based on an oil price of $77 per barrel. Any revenue above that goes into the excess crude account (ECA). The money in that account is depleting rapidly: an allAfrica post from earlier this year said there was $2.1 billion in it in February, down from $11 billion in December 2012. Oil has been far above $77 a barrel during that period. A more recent post from this month puts the total in the coffer at $4.1 billion.

Public violence has been increasing in the last year in the country, and the threat for more civil unrest as the February 2015 national elections approach is high. Sectarian tensions between Christians and Muslims are running high.

Low oil prices will only make the situation worse. According to RBC's Croft, "elites have also turned to crude theft as a way to help finance elections ... with less oil money around to grease the election machinery, crude theft and production outages could easily exceed levels seen in prior polls."

SEE ALSO: OPEC Had To Choose Between Two Libyan Governments

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Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Kim Jong-un assassination comedy "The Interview" has been the subject of a lot of controversy. The film was originally scheduled to be released in October, but after North Korea declared the film an "act of war" and threatened a "resolute and merciless" response if the US government failed to stop the film's release, it was delayed until Christmas Day. 

While changing an American film based on the demands of a dictator may seem ridiculous, Sony agreed to make minor digital alterations, including covering up "thousands of buttons worn by characters in the film" since they "depict the actual hardware worn by the North Korean military to honor the country's leader."

After viewing the relentlessly crass and silly finished product, I find it hard to take North Korea's assertions seriously. The film is clearly a comedy far more than it is a statement on foreign policy. While Rogen weaves in plenty of details that don't portray North Korea in very positive light, the movie never feels like an attack on the hermit kingdom.

The opening scene depicting a young Korean girl serenading a gathering of fellow Koreans with sing-songy insults to America sets the bar right away, and the film never takes itself too seriously.

James Franco plays Dave Skylark, the host of "Skylark Tonight," a tabloid news program that falls more in line with TMZ than CNN. Aaron Rapaport (Rogen) is the show's producer, and after 1,000 episodes of asinine celebrity coverage, he wishes to be taken seriously. When Skylark finds out Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, is a fan of his program, he sets up an exclusive interview with the dictator in North Korea. When the CIA gets wind of this, they bring Skylark and Rapaport in and ask them to assassinate him.

As all good comedies should, 'The Interview" has heart, and the on-screen chemistry between Franco and Rogen keeps everything afloat. The script features plenty of Rogen's trademark witty, crass humor and, just like in "Pineapple Express," the off-the-cuff banter between the two leads never gets old. Lizzy Caplan is also great (but underused) as the CIA agent who "honeypots" the duo into the assassination. 

"The Interview" is full of pop culture references, Hollywood in-jokes, and hysterically funny cameos. Besides the barrage of unexpected celebrities, one of the film's biggest laughs comes from Franco's rendition of a pop song that rivals his Britney Spears piano number from "Spring Breakers." While it's not as inherently self-referential as "This Is The End" since Rogen and Franco aren't playing themselves, there is similar humor at times, as Rogen shows that he isn't afraid to make fun of anyone.

The film is poised to be another surefire hit for Rogen, whose last two starring vehicles ("Neighbors,""This Is The End") were modestly budgeted at $18 million and $32 million respectively and each managed to gross over $100 million domestically. The reported budget for "The Interview" is around $30 million, so factoring in Rogen's track record, the film should have no trouble raking in some serious cash when it opens this Christmas. 

Watch the trailer below.  

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Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, is largely known as a behind-the-scenes player, a thinker and manager rather than a public agitator. This low profile is arguably one of Carter's top selling points.

After Hagel's troubled reign at the Pentagon, which ended in a highly public falling out with the White House over policy in the Middle East and accusations of laziness and dysfunction, it's prudent for the president to want a respected yet comparatively obscure figure like Carter to take over.

But that doesn't mean that Carter is totally surprise-free. As Time's Mark Thompson pointed out in April of 2013, Carter and a co-author argued for bombing North Korea in the summer of 2006 to prevent an upcoming ballistic missile test.

"'Surgical strike'" is a much-abused term," Carter and former Clinton official William J. Perry argued. "But destroying a test missile as it is being readied for launch qualifies for this category because only one US cruise missile or precision bomb with an ordinary high-explosive warhead could easily puncture and ignite the multistory test booster."

The target would be the Taepodong 2 missile, which had the potential (albeit long-term) to deliver a nuclear warhead to US holdings in the Pacific, including Hawaii. Luckily, the multi-stage missile tumbled to earth within a minute of a test pointedly carried out on July 4th, 2006.

But in the Time piece, Carter and Perry emphasized that North Korea could extract valuable information even from a failed test. And the US had the military means of preventing North Korea from even attempting to develop weapons capable of hitting American territory without incurring a substantial loss of life in the process: "As with space-shuttle launches from Cape Canaveral, all personnel would normally be a safe distance away from the rocket at the time, so there should be no collateral damage," they reassure their readers.

There are two assumptions underlying this line of analysis. One is that a belligerent and unpredictable North Korea would use long-range missiles as strategic leverage over the US and its allies in the event of a violent crisis in the Korean Peninsula. If pushed far enough, North Korea could attack Guam or Hawaii in attempt to demoralize the US or, conversely, bait it deeper into conflict.

The other assumption is that North Korea wouldn't attack the South if it were subject to the kind of US strike that Carter and Perry envisioned. Given the very limited scope of the attack they recommend, along with Pyongyang's perennial concerns over regime stability and probable desire not to trigger a regional war while on the brink of a nuclear weapons capability, this seems like a sound assumption.

So would an attack actually have been advisable?

A single US strike might have frozen North Korean missile development while proving the US was capable of backing its security interests in the region with force — something that could even have convinced North Korea to back down from the nuclear threshold.

Pyongyang would hold three nuclear tests after its Taepodong 2 adventure including its first-ever test in October of 2006. The commander of US forces in South Korea recently said he believed Iran was aiding North Korea's nuclear program, raising the possibility that the Tehran regime has access to vital information from these tests; meanwhile, external trade with North Korea has actually dramatically increased in the years since the first nuclear test was held, perhaps proving that the reality of a nuclear deterrent has forced the world to accept the regime's long-term survival. Carter and Perry's proposed attack might have changed the trajectory of the Korean Peninsula, or even prevented the troubling present-day state of play.

Conversely, it might have eroded elite confidence in the Kim regime, leading to internal unrest in North Korea or otherwise triggering a cascade of uncontrollable or unpredictable events.

A nearly decade-old article written when Carter was out of government and teaching at Harvard University probably doesn't offer much insight into how he would lead the Pentagon.

But the Time article still shows the probable future secretary of defense grappling with an issue that just about no one's been able to solve, a national security puzzle that's flummoxed nearly two decades' worth of Democratic and Republican presidents.

The solution he reached was signifcantly different than what most policymakers were recommending at hte time — and might have been the right move anyway.

SEE ALSO: North Korea is in the process of developing a fleet of nuclear-capable submarines

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attacked what he described as "the Obama-Clinton foreign policy" in a wide-ranging speech on Tuesday. 

"It's almost as if the whole world is on fire right now," Cruz said at a Washington event hosted by Concerned Veterans for America. "Leading from behind doesn't work."

As an alternative, Cruz presented his own three-part plan for "reasserting American leadership in the world." The first step, Cruz said, was making sure the US government again becomes a voice for freedom. 

"We should be a clarion voice for freedom. Never underestimate the power of the bully pulpit of America," Cruz said, citing former President Ronald Reagan's speech urging the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall. "One of the most striking and inexplicable aspects of the last six years is the almost complete absence of American leadership speaking out for freedom."

The second step of the Cruz foreign-policy plan is presenting a clear vision for the deployment of US military force. Cruz accused Obama and Hillary Clinton — the president's former secretary of state and likely Democratic frontrunner in 2016 — of being focused on press releases, photo-ops, and "international norms" rather than national security. 

"The second critical element is resolutely defending US national security. The singular failure of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy has been a failure to focus on the vital national security interests of the United States," Cruz said. "If and when we have to [use force], it should be with a clear, stated objective up front. We should go in with overwhelming force and then we should get the heck out. It is not the job of our military to produce democratic utopias across the world."

Throughout the speech, Cruz took Obama to task for having a lackluster approach to a host of issues, including nuclear negotiations with Iran, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, military operations against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), and backing democratic activists in despotic regimes.

For the third part of his speech, Cruz critiqued Obama's handling of his own administration. Cruz noted that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel just announced his resignation — the third such departure during Obama's six years in office.

"What a failure of leadership at a time when the world is on fire," said Cruz. "It seems what the administration is looking for is a defense secretary who will follow the orders of a political White House."

The administration's failures, Cruz said, were starting to become comical.

"You literally cannot make this stuff up. If 'Saturday Night Live' were parodying a hapless, ineffective president, they couldn't make up things up worse. Look, just a few months ago, Jimmy Carter criticized this president for being weak on foreign policy! Holy cow!" he exclaimed to laughs.

Updated (1:32 p.m.): With additional quotes from Cruz's speech.

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Whether they're directly cooperating or just "deconflicting," the US air force is operating alongside the Syrian and the Iranian air forces over Iraq and Syria.

On Monday, an unnamed US defense official told the Huffington Post that the US was aware that the Iranian Air Force was carrying out air strikes against ISIS targets in eastern Iraq. 

"We are aware of that. I wouldn't say we're necessarily concerned with it — we kind of have our eyes on it," the official told the Huffington Post. The official noted that the Iranian strikes occurred close to the Iran-Iraq border, away from where the US coalition has normally carried out airstrikes.

According to David Cenciotti, a military aviation expert and editor of The Aviationist, it's unlikely that Iranian aircraft would fly inside of Iraq without at least informing the US-led coalition of their presence and intentions.

"Although it is theoretically possible for Iranian planes to fly inside Iraq without any coordination with other air forces operating in the same airspace, it would be suicidal," Cenciotti told Business Insider. "For proper deconfliction of tactical assets, prior coordination and air space management and control are required. There are several aircraft performing Airspace Control and Airborne Early Warning over Syria and Iraq: no plane could fly undetected in the area."

In Syria the US and the government of President Bashar al-Assad have even reached an uncomfortable tacit alliance. Within the past week both Damascus and Washington have carried out independent air strikes against the Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIS's de facto capital. 

“What do you expect any sane person to think here? One day American airplanes and the next Bashar’s, how do they not crash or shoot each other? It is simple, they call each other and say today is my turn to kill the people of Raqqa, please don’t bother me, it will be yours tomorrow,” a Syrian resident of Raqqa told Syrian citizen journalist Edward Dark.

The confluence of US and Syrian objectives towards ISIS, and the gradual US acceptance that Assad may have to become a partner in the war against the jihadist militants, has led to no shortage of future difficult or even compromising scenarios for the White House. 

“This is all quite awkward for Washington,” Imad Salamey, a professor of international relations at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, told The Washington Post. “It definitely seems like the Syrian regime has craftily manipulated the coalition agenda to help its own agenda.”

The Iranian airstrikes seemed to be in support of a joint Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga military operation aimed at pushing ISIS out of Sa’adiya and Jawlala, towns along the Iranian border.

US airstrikes in Iraq have tended to be focused around key infrastructure like the Mosul Dam and the Yazidi enclave of Sinjar, although some strikes have been aimed at hitting ISIS militants closer to the Iranian border south of Kirkuk. 

Although the US may not have been directly involved in coordinating airstrikes with Iran, it's at least plausible that the countries have shared intelligence with each other over the location of ISIS fighters, especially given past engagements in Iraq that have involved both the US military and Iranian proxies.

In September, for instance, US warplanes provided air support to the Iraqi military, Shiite militias led and armed by Iran, and the Kurdish Peshmerga as the groups forced ISIS out of the strategic town of Amerli.

Despite assurances that the US would not share intelligence with Iran, US assistance during the assault on Amerli appeared to be carefully coordinated with someone and resulted in minimal collateral damage to Iranian forces.

And despite tensions between Syria and the US, the two militaries continue to at least mirror each other's actions. The US-led coalition reportedly carried out 30 airstrikes against Raqqa since Monday, while Damascus has struck Raqqa at least ten times since last week. 

As the war against ISIS continues, it seems likely that the US will have to adjust to sharing Syrian and Iraqi airspace with two new questionable de-facto partners.

Armin Rosen contributed to this report.

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Russia's new military command center in the Arctic became operational Monday, as the country increasingly militarizes the polar region. 

Moscow's new Northern Command will subsume the Russian Northern Fleet and form a unified military network of ground troops, aircraft, and naval vessels in an attempt to leverage Russia's strength in the great north.

Mark Galeotti, an NYU professor specializing in global affairs and Russian and Slavic studies, has published details in the Moscow Times:

Russia's icebreaker fleet is a particular "ice-power" asset: It is the world's largest and includes the massive nuclear-powered vessel 50 Years of Victory. Beyond that, Russia is constructing a chain of 10 Arctic search-and-rescue stations that, along with its 16 deepwater ports, are intended to consolidate Russia's authority over the Northern Sea Route, which Putin has said may prove even more important than the Suez Canal in shaping global shipping flows.

Here's a look at the Northern Sea Route:

In addition to Russia's port construction blitz across the Arctic, Moscow is also drastically upgrading its other military capabilities in the region. Galeotti notes that a commando detachment is being trained specifically for the Arctic warfare, and a second Arctic-warfare brigade will be trained by 2017.

Furthermore, a year-round airbase is under construction in the New Siberian Islands Archipelago alongside an additional 13 airfields and ten air-defense radar stations. This construction will "permit the use of larger and more modern bombers," Galeotti writes. "By 2025, the Arctic waters are to be patrolled by a squadron of next-generation stealthy PAK DA bombers."

In addition to the militarization of the region, Russia has sought to expand its influence in the Arctic through diplomatic means. In October, Russia's natural resources minister said that Moscow would seek to expand its Arctic borders by 1.2 million square kilometers through the United Nations. 

Moscow has said this expansion is due to scientific research that shows its continental shelf extends further below the pole than previously contended.

By expanding its territory, Russia would be in a prime position to take advantage of both natural gas and oil reserves while positioning itself to take part in any future trade through the north as the polar icecaps melt. 

The US estimates that upwards of 15% of the earth's remaining oil, 30% of its natural gas, and 20% of its liquefied natural gas are stored in the Arctic sea bed. 

Currently, the Arctic region is divided between regions made up of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the US. However, the center of the Arctic Ocean is classified as international waters and is beyond any country's control. 

It is likely this ungoverned region that Russia is seeking to be able to leverage its authority in the most.

SEE ALSO: Militaries know that the Arctic is melting — here's how they're taking advantage

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Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the concept of open seas for trade has been considered a cornerstone of the international order. But despite the recognition of the importance of open trade, the seas remained an anarchic place for hundreds of years.

In 1982, the United Nations passed the Convention on the Law of the Sea. This law marked the first successful international agreement for collaborative maritime security. During this time, maritime law shifted from focusing on the prevention of naval warfare — which is an incredibly rare occurrence in the present day — to ensuring the security and safety of the oceans for all to use for trade. 

This focus on security, and the doctrine of the Freedom of the Seas, allowed maritime trade to prosper. Today, 90% of all trade is conducted via the sea. However, maritime trade continues to remain threatened by a global resurgence in piracy and illicit trade on the high seas.

Norwich University has released the following infographic documenting the rise of the law of the sea and international maritime trade, charting four centuries of one of the most important concepts in international peace and security.

Norwich University’s Master of Arts in Diplomacy online program

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is a sneaky guy, and the new book"Putin’s Kleptocracy" by Karen Dawisha includes more evidence of the Russian president's intrigues.

One story involves Putin allegedly taking secret boat rides to the house of a Russian oligarch in Spain, as described by Anne Applebaum in The New York Review of Books.

This tale involves a construction company linked to Putin that reportedly received money from the budget of the city of St. Petersburg, where Putin was mayor from 1990 to 1996. The company subsequently bought property in Spain to construct villas for Putin's friends, reportedly using Russian army labor through Spanish contractors.

"These kinds of reports led Spanish police to become suspicious of Russian activity in Spain, and in the 1990s they began monitoring the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, as well as several well-known leaders of Russian organized crime, all of whom had houses on the southern coast of Spain,"Applebaum writes. "In 1999, to their immense surprise, their recorders picked up an unexpected visitor: Putin. He had arrived in Spain illegally, by boat from Gibraltar, having eluded Spanish passport control."

At the time of the secret visit, Putin was serving as the head of the FSB (the post-Soviet successor to the KGB). Spanish papers said he crossed into the country on forged documents as many as 37 times altogether. The former KGB lieutenant colonel became Russian prime minister in August 1999 and president in May 2000.

Interestingly, it was Berezovsky who is credited with playing kingmaker when Putin was pegged to succeed an ailing Boris Yeltsin as Russian president.

"Putin was Berezovsky’s creation," former Berezovsky acquaintance Owen Matthews wrote at The Daily Beast, noting that "Berezovsky thought he’d found a safe pair of hands" for the elite created in the wake of the Soviet Union's immediate demise.

But as Dawisha and Applebaum detail, Berezovsky's place at Putin's table was not safe.

"Soon after taking over, [Putin] made it clear that he intended to remove the Yeltsin-era elite and to put a new elite in its place—mostly from St. Petersburg, equally corrupt, but loyal exclusively to him," Applebaum writes.

In her book, Dawisha notes that "there were also separate allegations that Putin visited Spain on forged documents during the period 1996-2000 in connection with business meetings between himself, Boris Berezovsky, and Russian crime figures. Both these sets of allegations would follow him into the presidency."

Berezovsky fled Russia in 2000 and told Matthews in 2005 that he was ready to finance revolutionary change in Russia, adding that “the regime could only be changed through violence.”

Berezovsky was found dead in his London home in a reported suicide in March 2013.

Check out a full review at The New York Review of Books > 

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In this excerpt from Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding Of A Political Machine, Daniel Halper, a political writer and online editor at The Weekly Standard, compiles candid interviews with former Clinton administration aides, friends, and enemies to reveal the hardened relationship between Hillary Clinton and President Obama.

As Hillary, the pragmatist, had demanded before taking the job, she did have regular "one-on-ones" with the president. For Clinton this offered the visual, at least to the Washington press corps, that she was an integral player.

To Obama it was a chance for respectful listening and making sure that Hillary personally felt looped-in to the happenings at the White House. But it never seemed to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do once she left the room. 

"As secretary of state I think that her relationship with the president was cordial, but never close," says Senator John McCain, who served as the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and observed her up close.

McCain's a foreign policy hawk—one more aligned with Hillary than Obama, so it is with a tinge of regret the former Republican presidential nominee makes this observation on morning in his Senate office. 

"I don't believe that when crucial decisions were made that she was necessarily in the room ... [W]hen it came to some crucial decisions I don't think that Mr. Donilon (national security adviser to Obama) was swayed by her opinion. I'm not saying she wasn't consulted, but I think it's very well known she was not in the inner circle of decision makers on national security."

"I think she had very little interaction" with the president, says veteran State Department employee. "A lot of this was, you know, she would go to meetings of the NSC (national security council) when she was in town and called, but it was a very distant relationship."

The NSC sidelined Clinton at every turn—as it did other cabinet secretaries from Gates to his successors at the Pentagon, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel. "They would send [the defense secretary] to someplace like Botswana while they crafted North Korea policy at the White House," one former Defense Department official says. 

"Obama brought her into the administration, put her in a bubble, and ignored her," says a former high-ranking diplomat. "It turned out to be a brilliant political maneuver by Obama, making it impossible for her to challenge him, unless she left the administration, and not giving her an excuse that she could resign in protest. So she was stuck."

Once she realized she would never really be a major player in Obamaland, Hillary Clinton did what she always did: adjusted  her course. "She kept her head down on large issues," says a former Obama administration official.

"She did a nice job of tamping down any tension between her and the White House."

And she focused on her own future. With Clinton taking to the skies and traveling the world, her post at the State Department became a platform for the United States and Hillary Clinton.

Excerpted from Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding Of A Political Machine, by Daniel Halper, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2014). Excerpted with permission by Daniel Halper and HarperCollins Publishers.

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Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said Wednesday that there had been an accident at a nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine, Reuters reports.

"I know that an accident has occurred at the Zaporizhye NPP," Yatseniuk said, asking new energy minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn to make clear when the problem would be resolved and what steps would be taken to restore normal power supply across Ukraine.

The news agency Interfax Ukraine said the problem had occurred at bloc No 3 — a 1,000-megawatt reactor — and the resulting lack of output had worsened the power crisis in the country. Interfax added that the bloc was expected to come back on stream on Friday.

There are reports that the damage is minor, with no damage to the reactor. Ukraine gets about half its power from nuclear plants.

Ukraine's Zaporizhe nuke plant unit 3 was shut down Nov 28, due back on line Dec. 5, Interfax reports, without offering details of accident

— greg white (@whitegl) December 3, 2014

"Assuming it is indeed as minor as now appears, suggest Yatsenyuk goes on a 'how to talk about nuclear incidents without sowing panic' course," Guardian journalist Shaun Walker, who has covered the conflict in Ukraine, tweeted.

Ukraine voted on a new government on Tuesday night.

Under President Petro Poroshenko and Yatseniuk, Kiev has cut aid to the eastern regions held by pro-Russian rebels since soon after protesters toppled Kiev's pro-Moscow president in February.

Fighting has continued despite a cease-fire reached Sept. 5. In the rebel stronghold of Donetsk a senior separatist figure said rival sides agreed a new local truce from 10 a.m. ET around the city airport.

"But this is 65th time we agree about this. I don't rule out that there is going to be 66th time," Andrei Purgin said. Sounds of fighting abated but did not stop. Kiev said rebels renewed attacks on the airport in the evening.

Russia acknowledges supporting the separatists but denies Western charges of being a party to the armed conflict.

This post will be updated with details as they arrive.

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