U.S. Army: Robots for Ground Combat by 2028
June 20th, 2018Via: FCW:
Robotics is crucial to Army Secretary Mark Esper’s strategic vision, and he wants to have unmanned vehicles on the battlefield by 2028.
Esper previewed the Army’s soon-to-be-released strategic vision calling for unmanned vehicles as an integral part of the force at a Brookings Institute event June 5.
“I think robotics has the potential of fundamentally changing the character of warfare. And I think whoever gets there first will have a unique advantage on the modern battlefield,” Esper said.
“My ambition is by 2028, to begin fielding autonomous and certainly semi-autonomous vehicles that can fight on the battlefield,” he said.
General Electric Loses Place in Elite Dow Jones Industrial Average
June 19th, 2018Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Via: Reuters:
General Electric Co has lost its spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average after over a century in the blue chip stock index, a new blow to a company that once towered over the American business landscape but is now struggling to retain its standing as an industrial powerhouse.
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A decade and a half ago GE was the world’s most valuable public company. But it foundered in several key industrial markets in recent years, and a diversion into financial services steered it into the eye of the global financial crisis in 2008.
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Immelt also built up GE’s exposure to manufacturing and servicing coal and gas-fired electricity plants, only to see demand for such plants fall dramatically in recent years as sales of suddenly cost-competitive renewable wind and solar systems increased.
Tesla Model 3: Musk Claims ‘Extensive and Damaging Sabotage’ by Employee
June 18th, 2018Via: CNBC:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent an email to all employees on Monday morning about a factory fire, and seemed to reference possible sabotage.
Now, CNBC has learned that Musk also sent an e-mail to all employees at Tesla late on Sunday night alleging that he has discovered a saboteur in the company’s ranks.
Musk said this person had conducted “quite extensive and damaging sabotage” to the company’s operations, including by changing code to an internal product and exporting data to outsiders.
Trump Orders Creation of Space-Focused U.S. Military Branch
June 18th, 2018Oh sure, it’ll make the Pentagon more efficient: At incinerating trillions of taxpayer dollars.
Also, there’s Carol Rosin’s account of her time with Wernher Von Braun, which might finally be coming into play:
The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had “killer satellites”. We were told that they were coming to get us and control us – that they were “Commies.”
Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country “crazies.” We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.
The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it. Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.
And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card. “And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie.”
Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he was ordering the creation of a sixth branch of the military to focus on space, a move critics said could harm the Air Force.
“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space,” Trump said before a meeting of his National Space Council.
“We are going to have the Air Force and we’re going to have the ‘Space Force.’ Separate but equal. It is going to be something,” he said later.
The United States is a member of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bars the stationing of weapons of mass destruction in space and only allows for the use of the moon and other celestial bodies for peaceful purposes.
The idea of a Space Force has been raised before, by Trump and previous administrations, with proponents saying it would make the Pentagon more efficient.
San Francisco Tourists Shocked By Aggressive Vagrants, Discarded Needles, Dead Bodies
June 18th, 2018Via: ZeroHedge:
San Francisco – a Democratic stronghold known for cable cars, quaint architecture and its diverse culture, has become a bastion of squalor and crime as city dwellers and visitors alike dodge aggressive, drug-addled vagrants. And it’s beginning to scare the tourists…
Inside the Former Texas Walmart Where 1,400 Immigrant Children Are Held
June 16th, 2018Via: WGN:
The strangeness of the largest migrant children’s center in the United States, near the border with Mexico, shows up in the details.
Here, there are 1,469 boys, ages 10 to 17, housed inside the 250,000-square-foot shell of a former Walmart superstore. None of the 313 bedrooms have doors. Or ceilings, so that children lying in their beds look up past where their walls end to the scaffolding of the superstore roof high above. The hundreds of children neatly lined up for their supper of barbecued chicken or sandwiches file past murals of presidents, including one of Donald Trump, alongside with a curious quote from him in Spanish alongside the English: “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”
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With that increase, as of Wednesday, ORR spokesman Brian Marriott said, the office was holding 11,351 children in more than 100 shelters across 17 states.
At the Casa Padre shelter, which opened last year, the surge in numbers has been palpable. In March, the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs, which also operates 26 other shelters in Texas, Arizona and California, had a capacity of 1,186, according to a licensing document posted in the shelter. More recently, as children flooded into the system, they had to get a variance from Texas regulators to boost its capacity temporarily to 1,497. The average population of the shelter has jumped by nearly 300 in less than a month, said Martin Hinojosa, director of compliance for Southwest Key Programs.
Today, the shelter is almost at capacity again. Five cot-like beds have been squeezed into bedrooms built originally for four.
Juan Sanchez, the founder and president of Southwest Key Programs, refused to discuss the “zero-tolerance” policy.
“Our goal is to reunite these children with their families as soon as we can do that,” he told reporters Wednesday. He said that more than 70% of the 5,129 children at Southwest Key Programs shelters were unaccompanied, rather than separated from their parents. However, he conceded that the number of children separated was rising.
Flashback: Obama’s Illegal Alien Facilities
Sweden Mobilizes Home Guard for First Time Since 1975
June 16th, 2018Via: The Local:
Sweden’s 22,000 volunteer soldiers were on Tuesday evening grabbing their guns and uniform, cancelling social engagements, and rushing to their stations, as the Swedish Armed Forces launched its biggest surprise exercise since 1975.
“The idea behind this exercise is that we are now strengthening our military defence of the country,” Sweden’s Supreme Commander Micael Bydén told Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT. “Its part of my duty to ensure that we boost our operative capabilities.”
According to a press release, all 40 Home Guard battalions have been mobilised for the exercise, which means Swedes will see them carrying out duties and patrolling at airports, ports and on the streets throughout Wednesday’s National Day holiday.
The exercise is part of Sweden’s national effort to rebuild its Cold War Total Defence strategy in response to an increasingly belligerent Russia. The last time Sweden’s Armed Forces called up the entire Home Guard at once was in 1975 at the height of the Cold War.
Just a week ago Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency sent out its “If Crisis or War Comes” brochure to more than four million Swedish households, advising them to stock up on water, tinned and dry food, and other essentials to increase Sweden’s resilience.
U.S. Prosecutors Pull Encrypted Messages from Phones Seized in Cohen Raids
June 15th, 2018With regard to any application that claims to provide privacy: “The simple fact is that the platforms on which it runs are compromised from the operating systems down to the silicon.”
I’m not saying to not encrypt. Encryption can prevent your data from falling into the hands of thieves, Google and maybe the local police. What I’m saying is that, “If you are specifically targeted by a state intelligence agency, you are going to have a very, very hard time defeating that.” (From the post linked above.)
Via: Reuters:
Federal prosecutors investigating U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen have extracted more than 700 pages of messages sent using encrypted programs like WhatsApp and Signal on phones seized from Cohen, according to a court filing on Friday.
White House Announces 25 Percent Tariff on Chinese Tech Goods
June 15th, 2018
Via: The Verge:
Today, President Trump announced an aggressive new set of tariffs against China, setting a 25 percent import tax on $50 billion worth of “industrially significant technologies” imported from China. In previous discussions, China has threatened to retaliate against such tariffs, stoking fears of a far-reaching and unpredictable trade war between the countries. US Customs and Border Protection is set to begin collecting the tariffs on July 6th.
A list published by the White House details more than 1,000 specific products that will be affected by the tariffs. It includes a broad range of components used in electronics manufacturing, specifically naming touchscreens, batteries, and electric motors. General components like transistors are also named on the list as well as more specific components used in televisions, cameras, and radio receivers. Fiber optic cables are also on the list, although most fiber optic cable is manufactured by US companies. Notably, the list does not include cellphones or completed televisions.
Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Asked to Build Chicago High-Speed Transit Between O’Hare and Downtown
June 14th, 2018Via: USA Today:
Elon Musk has been tapped to build a futuristic transportation system using high-powered electric “skates” to carry passengers between O’Hare International Airport and downtown Chicago.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will formally announce Thursday that his administration is entering one-on-one negotiations with Musk’s Boring Company to build the high-speed system that will utilize electric vehicles running through twin underground tunnels, said Adam Collins, the mayor’s spokesman.
If Emanuel and Musk, who is also the co-founder and CEO of the electric car company Tesla, are able to reach a final deal, it would then need approval from Chicago’s city council.
The proposed system would transport passengers between O’Hare, one of the nation’s busiest airports, and downtown in 12 minutes, according to the Boring Company’s proposal. Currently, it takes passengers riding the city’s train system about 45 to 50 minutes to make the roughly 16-mile trip between downtown and O’Hare. Taking a taxi or ride-share can take even longer.
The mayor hopes to start construction on the project within a year and complete the project within four years.
