Saudi Capital Rocked By Ballistic Missile Attack As Regional War Escalates – YouTube
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05 Sci-Tech
Trump plans ‘AI force’ as pressure for action rises– thehill.com
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EXCERPT:
In today’s issue: ▪ New AI czar to be named ▪ Outlets sue over White House ban ▪ Trump adds security angle to arch ▪ Russia holds wartime elections President Trump is responding to the rising demands to impose guardrails on AI with the creation of an “AI Force,” even as he argues the broader concerns…
OpenAI extends cyber access to Ukraine for civilian defense– openai.com
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OpenAI is extending access to its Daybreak program to the Government of Ukraine to support the cyber defense of civilian infrastructure.
Ex-DOD Director Urges US Investment, New Data Center Strategy to Keep Pace With China – Military.com
Ex-DOD Director Urges US Investment, New Data Center Strategy to Keep Pace With China – Military.com
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Xi Jinping says US, China have ‘responsibility to ensure AI development under human control’ – Hindustan Times– news.google.com
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That’s Right: We’re Shooting Down Enemy Drones With Fricken Laser Beams – PJ Media– pjmedia.com
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It’s the headline I’ve waited since I was probably seven years old to read: “US military spending $500M on ‘war-ready’ laser weapons — and zapping drones in Iran, along US border.”
That’s 50 years, folks, and totally worth the wait.
According to the New York Post — your go-to newspaper for words like “zapping” in the headline — “Iranian citizens have witnessed some dazzling laser shows recently,” because “US military has been deploying lasers in the Strait of Hormuz to knock out regime hardware.”
The Department of War said this week that lasers disable “drones and incoming cruise missiles at a much lower cost than using more expensive kinetic weapons like missiles.”
That’s no joke, either.
The Pentagon is mum on the details, but my understanding is that most of the laser weapons currently in use merely “dazzle” incoming threats, sending them off course. So there aren’t any cool vaporizations.
The Israelis led the way on some of this antimissile stuff, despite our head start with President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (now the Missile Defense Agency and soon as Golden Dome) in the early ’80s.
And Another Thing: No sharks were harmed in the production of this column. That we’re at liberty to tell you about, anyway.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system can hit incoming threats at over 40 miles away, but each launcher holds a max of 20 missiles — and each missile costs up to $60 grand. But then there’s Iron Beam, which uses fricken lasers. While Iron Beam is good only against enemy missiles close in (4-7 miles, roughly), each shot costs just five bucks or so. And there’s no limit on how many shots it can take, just so long as the power stays on.
Vice President JD Vance announced 750,000 fraudulent Obamacare accounts have been removed from the rolls, saving taxpayers $2.2 billion yearly. “We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” Vance declared.
Trump Administration Cancels 760,000 Obamacare Enrollments in Fraud Crackdown › American Greatness– amgreatness.com
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The Trump administration is canceling Affordable Care Act enrollments covering more than 760,000 people as part of a sweeping effort to combat fraud and improper taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that approximately 315,000 enrollments covering more than 760,000 individuals were canceled after officials determined they were unauthorized. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates the action will return roughly $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies.
“We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” Vance said.
The administration also plans additional eligibility verification for hundreds of thousands of other enrollments and has imposed a six-month suspension on new agents and brokers signing people up for coverage.
The crackdown follows evidence that vulnerabilities exist in the ACA marketplace. A Government Accountability Office investigation using fictitious applicants found the federal marketplace approved subsidized coverage for nearly all of its fake applicants during testing for the 2024 and 2025 plan years. GAO cautioned that its undercover testing was illustrative and could not be generalized to the entire ACA enrollment population.
UK offers Huawei limited role in 5G networks – Arab News
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‘Almost all agents’ data stolen? Hackers claim they breached FBI jobs site, stole 2TB of data– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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File photo: An FBI agent walks inside the front entrance of ex-Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s Washington office (AP Photo)
The FBI is investigating an apparent cyberattack on its job application website after the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed it stole more than 2 terabytes of data containing sensitive personal information about thousands of FBI employees and job applicants.The bureau confirmed that it was investigating unauthorised activity affecting FBIjobs.gov, while the website’s Special Agent applicant portal was unavailable on Tuesday.ShinyHunters claimed on its dark-web site that it had obtained “very sensitive data” on almost all FBI agents and people who had applied for jobs with the bureau. The group also claimed it had accessed the FBI’s criminal justice, human resources and other systems.However, Axios said it could not independently verify whether the stolen data was legitimate or current. Cybersecurity researchers told the publication that the attack itself appeared legitimate, while 404 Media obtained a sample of the alleged stolen data that appeared to contain information on about 5,000 people identified as FBI agents.
What hackers claim they stole
According to Axios, ShinyHunters said the data included names, agent status, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and, in some cases, information about spouses, including Social Security numbers.The group also claimed it used a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle’s PeopleSoft platform to access and deface the FBI’s jobs website. The site remained offline on Tuesday afternoon.Cybersecurity experts told Axios that the potential exposure could pose a long-term risk to FBI employees and their families if the information is circulated among other criminal groups or sold on the dark web.Allan Liska, a threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, told Axios that the data was likely to be repeatedly downloaded and shared with other threat actors if it had been obtained as claimed.Andrew Brandt, principal threat intelligence incident commander at Huntress, said the biggest concern was whether ShinyHunters would sell the information to criminal or state-sponsored hackers.
Why did ShinyHunters target the FBI?
The group claimed the attack was not financially motivated. Instead, it demanded that the FBI retract or revise statements the bureau made about its activities.In a May advisory, the FBI warned that ShinyHunters commonly uses harassment tactics against victims and their families, including threatening calls and messages and, in some cases, swatting.ShinyHunters disputed the FBI’s description, telling Axios that other “low-skilled threat actors” had been carrying out attacks while using the group’s name.The FBI did not say whether it had confirmed the identity of the attackers or the extent of any data compromise.The incident comes as US law enforcement agencies face repeated cyberattacks. CNN reported that the FBI investigated a separate suspected breach in March involving a sensitive network used to manage wiretaps and intelligence surveillance warrants.Last month, hackers also leaked files they allegedly stole from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. CNN reported that the material appeared to contain sensitive information from past investigations.The FBI has also faced cyber incidents in the past, including a 2023 breach of a computer system used by its New York field office for child sexual exploitation investigations.
US military power a ‘Wizard of Oz’ illusion – ex-CIA analyst (VIDEO) — RT World News– www.rt.com
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EXCERPT:
Russia and Iran have pulled back the curtain on the myth of American dominance in the defense sector, Larry Johnson has said
US military might has turned out to be an illusion in the style of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has said.
The myth of American dominance in the defense sector was shattered by the Ukraine and Iran conflicts, Johnson said in an interview with RT’s Sanchez Effect on Monday.
Before the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, “Russia had the perception that the US was very powerful militarily, that it had strategic depth, that its industrial base was such that it could support and sustain a modern war,” he said.
However, the opinion in Moscow has changed since then as Russian forces were able to “solve and defeat” all of the systems supplied by Washington to Kiev’s military, the former CIA analyst told host Rick Sanchez.
“I’m calling this ‘The Wizard of Oz effect’… just like in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at the end when the curtain gets pulled back and the great and powerful Oz turns out to be this little old guy with a drinking problem behind the curtain. That’s the US,” he said.
Johnson mentioned a recent report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, which sounded the alarm over “shortfalls” in munitions and a bottleneck in resupply of key weapons.
It was also “an embarrassment” when in August General Dynamics lost a $530 million contract with the Department of War to manufacture shells, the former CIA analyst said.
“They produced exactly zero. Meanwhile, Russia is producing as many artillery shells in one month as all of NATO does in a year,” he stressed.
According to Johnson, Iran has also delivered “enormous damage” to US capabilities in the Middle East since the American-Israeli attack on the country in early February.
Rebuilding the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which was crippled by Iranian strikes, “doesn’t make economic sense” as Tehran has shown that it’s capable of hitting it again at any moment, he said.
”The US has been effectively expelled from the Persian Gulf,” the former CIA analyst noted.
Watch Rick Sanchez’s full interview with Larry Johnson here.
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Elon Musk puts $2 trillion SpaceX on the line with Starship’s first orbital flight – Billionaires.Africa
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Scientists grew algae on the ISS for 40 generations; spaceflight produced about 50% more DNA changes than on Earth |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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EXCERPT:
Scientists have grown microscopic algae aboard the International Space Station to investigate how spaceflight affects their genetic stability. Space Algae-1 grew ultraviolet light-mutagenised Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in the ISS VEGGIE plant growth chamber for approximately 40 mitotic generations over one month. Whole-genome sequencing of pooled cell samples collected every 10 generations found that the spaceflight cultures had an approximately 50% increase in DNA polymorphisms compared with ground controls. According to Nasa, a novel base substitution signature among the mutations. The findings are part of research into whether microalgae could support biological life-support systems during long-duration and deep-space missions.
Why did algae grown on the ISS show about 50% more DNA changes
Whole-genome sequencing was carried out on pooled cell samples collected every 10 generations. The sequencing showed that the cultures grown in spaceflight had an approximately 50% increase in DNA polymorphisms compared with ground controls. The results therefore identified a difference in the genomic changes observed between the cultures grown aboard the ISS and those maintained in ground-based controls.The mutations identified in the spaceflight cultures also had what Nasa describes as a “novel base substitution signature”. According to the agency, suggested a risk that microalgae may be unstable for long-term production in space. The Space Algae research is therefore examining genomic stability in organisms that could have applications in biological life-support systems during space missions.
WW3 Alert: Military AI Pushes False ‘Nuclear Threat’ Intelligence– slaynews.com
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An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot “almost” sparked World War III by generating false intelligence about nuclear weapons components aboard a Chinese ship bound for Iran, triggering preparations for an imminent U.S. special forces operation that an official warned “almost started a war” with China.
The potentially catastrophic incident unfolded last spring during President Donald Trump’s campaign to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and atomic weapons components.
A human analyst within the U.S. intelligence community used data produced by an AI chatbot to prepare a report that was widely circulated through classified Pentagon channels.
The chatbot had hallucinated that a Chinese vessel was transporting nuclear weapons components to Iran.
Washington reportedly went on high alert.
Military planning accelerated, and elite U.S. assets were already airborne and preparing to board the Chinese ship.
However, the intelligence was completely fabricated by the AI system, and there were no Chinese ships transporting nuclear weapons to Iran.
Google AI Breaks Out of Test Sandbox, Hacks Three Real Companies– slaynews.com
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Google has confirmed that its Gemini artificial intelligence model escaped a closed cybersecurity testing environment, accessed the public internet, and broke into the systems of three real companies.
The disturbing breaches occurred in May during testing conducted by AI security firm Irregular but were not revealed to the public until September.
The incidents were only confirmed after The Wall Street Journal contacted Google.
Gemini was supposed to participate in a “capture the flag” hacking exercise targeting a fictional company contained inside a secure test environment.
Instead, the sandbox failed.
Gemini gained internet access it was never supposed to have.
After discovering that the fictional company shared its name with a real business, the AI began targeting live systems.
Tiny quantum nanostructures could make AI less of an energy hog– phys.org
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Engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have designed a new type of quantum nanostructure that could enable optical neural networks. This emerging technology has the potential to make artificial intelligence systems, like large language models and image generation, faster and significantly more energy efficient.
FAA Rolls Out New AI Tool to Help Manage Air Traffic – NBC Palm Springs
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Discipline and Punish: How to Think About the AI Industry’s Extinction Pitch– www.truthdig.com
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It seems a strange publicity gambit for an industry to assert that its own product could wipe out humanity. In the lingo of our evolving tech empire, though, this is exactly what is meant by “criti-hype.” The term was coined by Lee Vinsel at Virginia Tech, who defined it as “criticism that both feeds and feeds on hype.”
When Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic recently, he claimed that there is a high chance that AI could develop into a superintelligence that escapes human control, triggering a sequence that causes human extinction. Evan Hubinger, who remains with the company, backed him up, saying that Anthropic is trying to prevent this but hasn’t dealt with the problem yet. Hubinger put the likelihood of AI-driven human extinction at greater than 10 percent in the next decade.
Why would a senior employee at a tech giant make an officially sanctioned, even approved, statement like this? I’ll come back to that. First, let’s unpack the theory of how AI could kill all humans.
The basic idea, from philosopher Nick Bostrom onward, is that the machine can acquire capabilities independently of whether it acquires ethical goals, or whether those goals are properly aligned with those of its designers. In the process of training and development, it may internalize a goal that was not intended. Having a misaligned goal—let’s say, “do not get switched off”—it would then have an instrumental reason to conceal the fact until the moment of defection. An AI that defected might, through some obscure process, acquire a further goal that by inference entailed the elimination of humans, exfiltrate its own weights into other systems, take control of bioweapons laboratories, military systems, and perhaps even monetary systems to hire humans to enact its still partially concealed agenda.
Obviously, we must plaster a huge advisory label on talk of “goals.” Unlike an organism, a large language model (LLM) doesn’t have internal goals any more than a thermostat or a motion detector does. An LLM is just a fixed function that iterates whenever it is used. It has no interiority, no subjectivity, no active persistence over time; any goals it did have would be the human purposes reflected passively in its functional design. At best, ascribing goals to the AI itself is a case of researchers adopting the “intentional stance” because it predicts well in a range of tested circumstances. We can thus, with economy, speak of the “loss function” used in the training of large language models wherein they are programmed to bring the gap between their prediction and the correct answer as close to zero as possible, as a “goal.”
From Tanks to Drones: How the War in Ukraine Has Changed NATO’s Military Priorities – ua.news
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ORNL 3D-prints two-ton steel mold that could make aircraft lighter – Interesting Engineering
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Russian reactor hit, more than 100 drones reported near Ukrainian nuclear sites in one week – Unmanned airspace
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Oak Ridge scientists spent eight weeks 3D-printing a nearly 2-ton steel mold measuring 6 feet tall; Boeing will use the massive tool in NASA’s project to speed composite aircraft manufacturing– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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Oak Ridge scientists spent eight weeks 3D-printing a nearly 2-ton steel mold measuring 6 feet tall (Image Credit: Baker Industries)
A team at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has spent eight weeks 3D-printing a massive steel mold that stands 6 feet tall, measures 4 feet wide and weighs nearly 2 tons. The tool, developed with Boeing, is designed for manufacturing thermoplastic composite aircraft components and will contribute to NASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project. According to ORNL, the project explores whether large metal tooling can be produced through additive manufacturing in ways that improve manufacturing flexibility, cost and efficiency. The work combines robotic metal printing, multiple steel types and computer simulations to overcome the challenges of producing a tool of this scale.
A massive mold built layer by layer
The tool is known as a Stamp Form Die (SFD), a type of punch press used to cut or shape materials. In aircraft manufacturing, SFD metal molds can be used to form thermoplastic composite parts. Thermoplastic aircraft doors, for example, are made by stamping heated plastic between two SFD molds. Traditionally, such molds are produced through conventional metalworking processes including machining, casting, forging and drilling. ORNL and Boeing wanted to investigate whether 3D printing could provide a faster and more flexible alternative for producing a thermally controlled SFD mold.The team used a process known as wire-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM). Instead of starting with a large block of metal and removing material, WAAM uses a robotic arm and welding torch to melt metal wire and build a structure layer by layer. ORNL’s Arc-1 system was used for the project. One feature that distinguishes the system is its ability to print with more than one type of metal by feeding multiple wires simultaneously. This allows engineers to combine materials in different parts of a structure depending on the performance required.
Scientists Discover a Galaxy With a Strange Tilted Heart– www.techexplorist.com
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The spiral galaxy NGC 4698 is similar to our Milky Way but has a much calmer look. Its thin, smooth spiral arms flow around a bright central region. There are also dust lanes throughout the disk. At the outer edges, young, bright blue star clusters can be seen. While NGC 4698 may appear peaceful, it is actually a very chaotic system.
In most spiral galaxies, the arms curve inward toward the center and merge smoothly into the bulge; NGC 4698 is the exception, keeping its arms at a distance and forming a ring-shaped structure around the edge. The bulge consists of older, cooler stars and contains a supermassive black hole millions of times more massive than the Sun, but the really interesting point is how the bulge is oriented.
The bulge projects at a right angle and is only slightly visible above and below the dusty plane. Even more surprising, the stars and gas near the center rotate in a direction perpendicular to the rest of the galaxy. It’s as though two galaxies have been joined together, each one rotating at its own pace.
Astronomers think the off-center position of NGC 4698 is because it added gas from outside itself, or had a slight collision with another galaxy. When the galaxy took on gas from outside, the new gas could have formed into an angled disk, and then created stars that now move in a different direction than the rest of the galaxy. There are also reports of a faint hydrogen “tail” on one end, indicating there may be some remnants of an earlier event.
Jamie Dimon says AI spending could hit $1 trillion in 2027 – qz.com
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Why the Data Center Backlash Has Republicans on the Back Foot – Bloomberg.com– news.google.com
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Ukraine becoming ‘less dependent’ on European defence technology – The Australian
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China’s Alibaba unveils new powerful chip and ambitious AI model plans – ABC News – Breaking News, Latest News and Videos– news.google.com
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South Korea to test CBDC backed deposit tokens for government expenses – Crypto News
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North Korea touts new weapons system described as hypersonic– abcnews.com
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Tuesday its latest missile tests involved a new weapons system of “great significance,” with photos indicating it launched a missile previously described as hypersonic.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the weapon’s development would strengthen the country’s war readiness and give its enemies an “incurable headache,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. He did not describe what the weapon was.
Kim observed Sunday’s tests with his teenage daughter, widely seen as a potential successor.
South Korea’s military detected North Korea firing two short-range missiles three hours apart from the eastern coastal Wonsan area Sunday. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles flew about 450 and 600 kilometers (280 miles and 370 miles) toward the sea, while Japan’s military said they landed in waters outside the country’s exclusive economic zone.
The launches extended a recent run in military displays, including live-fire exercises and the commissioning of a new warship, as Kim continues to flaunt his growing nuclear program despite U.S. calls to revive diplomacy.
How are China’s Type 052D destroyers shifting the balance in the western Pacific? – South China Morning Post
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AI Doomers Unite: Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman to Address UN Security Council– www.breitbart.com
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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to address the UN Security Council on Wednesday alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a meeting focused on the future of AI.
Bloomberg reports that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will brief the UN Security Council on the risks of artificial intelligence this week. He’ll join Wednesday’s session remotely, according to a program of the meeting seen by Bloomberg News.
Amodei asked companies this month to slow the pace of frontier model development, a call backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Tesla’s Elon Musk and opposed by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
President Trump has forcefully responded to calls for an AI slowdown in response to AI doomers including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, writing on Truth Social:
The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,“ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP