Inside the Pentagon’s Effort to Build a Killer Robot
October 28th, 2015Via: Time:
The defense program DARPA is working to create an artificial brain—but what will it mean for humanity if it succeeds?
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I am headed to the laboratory of Dr. Garrett T. Kenyon, whose program falls under the rubric of synthetic cognition, an attempt to build an artificial brain.
Roboticists define artificial brains as man-made machines designed to be as intelligent, self-aware and creative as humans. No such machine yet exists, but Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) scientists like Dr. Kenyon believe that, given the rapid advances in DARPA technologies, one day soon they will. There are two technologies that play key roles in advancing artificial intelligence, and they are computing, which involves machines, and neuroscience, which involves the human brain.
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DARPA is not primarily in the business of helping soldiers heal; that is the job of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. DARPA’s job is to “create and prevent strategic surprise.” DARPA prepares vast weapons systems of the future. So what are the classified brain programs really for?
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The technologies DARPA is pursuing in its brain and prosthetics programs have dual use in DARPA’s efforts to engineer hunter-killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons systems. Coupled with the quest for artificial intelligence, all this might explain why DARPA is so focused on looking inside people’s brains.
U.S. Back to Combat in Iraq AND Syria
October 28th, 2015“This is combat and things are complicated,” Carter said.
No shit.
With the Russian imposed no-fly-zone over Syria… How’s this going to work?
Without mushroom clouds, I hope.
Via: NBC:
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin “direct action on the ground” against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive.
“We won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group.
Carter pointed to last week’s rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages held by ISIS.
Related: Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, U.S. Commando Killed in ISIS Raid, Ran to Gunfight
Carter and Pentagon officials initially refused to characterize the rescue operation as U.S. boots on the ground. However, Carter said last week that the military expects “more raids of this kind” and that the rescue mission “represents a continuation of our advise and assist mission.”
This may mean some American soldiers “will be in harm’s way, no question about it,” Carter said last week.
After months of denying that U.S. troops would be in any combat role in Iraq, Carter late last week in a response to a question posed by NBC News, also acknowledged that the situation U.S. soldiers found themselves in during the raid in Hawija was combat.
“This is combat and things are complicated,” Carter said.
Northrop Grumman Wins Long Range Strike Bomber Contract
October 27th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
Northrop Grumman on Tuesday won the Pentagon contract to build a fleet of stealthy planes known as the Long Range Strike Bomber, a new generation of aircraft designed to reach deep into enemy territory.
Northrop beat out a team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the high-stakes competition for a project likely to be one of the Pentagon’s most significant over the next decade.
In announcing the award, valued at nearly $60 billion, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the program represents a “technological leap” that will allow the United States to “remain dominant.”
Bill Would Give Legal Protection to Firms that Share Data with Government
October 27th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
The Senate on Tuesday passed a cybersecurity bill that would give companies legal immunity for sharing data with the federal government, over the protests of some lawmakers and consumer advocates who say that the legislation does not adequately protect Americans’ privacy.
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, must now be reconciled with legislation passed earlier this year by the House.
The Obama administration and lawmakers in both parties have been seeking for years to enact information-sharing legislation, and it now seems likely to become law.
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But privacy activists argue that the bill lacks robust privacy protections. They expressed concerns with provisions that allow the Department of Homeland Security to share information gathered in the program with other government agencies, such as the FBI or the National Security Agency. Critics say that effectively turns the legislation into a backdoor surveillance bill that benefits the intelligence community.
U.S. Weighs Special Forces in Syria, Helicopters in Iraq
October 27th, 2015Via: Reuters:
The United States is considering sending a small number of special operations forces to Syria and attack helicopters to Iraq as it weighs options to build momentum in the battle against Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
Shocker: Court Chooses to Ignore Overwhelming Evidence of NSA’s Mass Internet Spying
October 27th, 2015Via: ACLU:
A federal district court yesterday dismissed Wikimedia v. NSA, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of a broad group of educational, legal, human rights, and media organizations whose communications are swept up by the NSA’s unprecedented Internet dragnet.
Our lawsuit concerns the NSA’s “upstream” surveillance, which involves the mass interception and searching of Americans’ international Internet communications. The court held that our clients lacked “standing” to bring suit, because they had not plausibly alleged that their communications were being monitored by the NSA. That’s just plain wrong.
The court’s opinion relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision in a previous ACLU lawsuit, Amnesty v. Clapper, a challenge to warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In February 2013, the Supreme Court dismissed that case on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had communicated with the NSA’s targets.
But as we explained in court, our current challenge to the NSA’s warrantless spying is very different than the last one. Among other reasons, Clapper was decided prior to the Snowden revelations and extensive government disclosures about upstream surveillance. These revelations fundamentally changed the equation. Since Clapper, the public has learned that the NSA is not surveilling only its targets — it is instead surveilling virtually everyone, looking for information about those targets.
Standardized Testing Mess in U.S. Public Schools
October 27th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
The number of standardized tests U.S. public school students take has exploded in the past decade, with most schools requiring too many tests of dubious value, according to the first comprehensive survey of the nation’s largest districts.
A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade, a new Council of the Great City Schools study found. By contrast, most countries that outperform the United States on international exams test students three times during their school careers.
California 1st State to Pass Bill Banning Indiscriminate Antibiotic Use in Livestock
October 27th, 2015Via: Natural Society:
Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a bill that will effectively ban the routine use of the drugs in the animals. [1]
“California is a big agricultural state, and it often is a bellwether for the nation. We often see the FDA following suit or other states following suit,” said Elisa Odabashian of Consumers Union, a supporter of the bill, speaking of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, says that roughly 70% of medically-important antibiotics are given to livestock in the U.S. These drugs are the same kind used in human medicine. The antibiotics are intended to promote growth and prevent disease in food-producing animals, but their overuse is a significant contributor to the 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths caused by drug-resistant “superbug” bacteria each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency has recommended phasing out antibiotic use in otherwise healthy livestock. [2]
“The science is clear that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance and the undermining of decades of lifesaving advances in medicine,” Gov. Brown said in a statement.
Tampons, Sterile Cotton, Sanitary Pads Contaminated with Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide (Glyphosate)
October 27th, 2015And many more…
Via: Russia Today:
The vast majority ? 85 percent ? of tampons, cotton and sanitary products tested in a new Argentinian study contained glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, ruled a likely carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of the samples tested positive for AMPA, glyphosate’s metabolite, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at the Socio-Environmental Interaction Space (EMISA) of the University of La Plata in Argentina.
All of the raw and sterile cotton gauze analyzed in the study showed evidence of glyphosate, said Dr. Damian Marino, the study’s head researcher.
‘Zeno Effect’ Verified: Atoms Won’t Move While You Watch
October 27th, 2015Via: Cornell University:
One of the oddest predictions of quantum theory – that a system can’t change while you’re watching it – has been confirmed in an experiment by Cornell physicists. Their work opens the door to a fundamentally new method to control and manipulate the quantum states of atoms and could lead to new kinds of sensors.
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“This gives us an unprecedented tool to control a quantum system, perhaps even atom by atom,” said Patil, lead author of the paper. Atoms in this state are extremely sensitive to outside forces, he noted, so this work could lead to the development of new kinds of sensors.
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The research was supported by the Army Research Office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under its QuASAR program and the National Science Foundation.
