Free Republic

The Air Force announced Friday it will soon deploy two ground-based laser weapons to an undisclosed location to test how they can be used against small drones, the service’s first “operational field test” of an experimental “directed energy” weapon. Because laser weapons could fire constantly without wasting ammunition, military technology experts have theorized they could one day be useful in combating the small, remotely operated quadcopter drones that ISIS has used. They are also expected to be an effective counter against swarming attack drones, a concept that a handful of countries are exploring.

Peter Thiel is doubling down on his criticism of Google. The Silicon Valley investor wrote in a New York Times op-ed Thursday that the search giant is hurting the US by sharing its artificial intelligence technology with China. Thiel, one of President Donald Trump's highest-profile supporters in the tech industry, said it's "shocking" that Google would work with a rival country, because AI is such a beneficial military tool. He wrote that AI is "valuable to any army -- to gain an intelligence advantage, for example, or to penetrate defenses in the relatively new theater of cyberwarfare, where we are...

On a Friday afternoon in late July, a crowd of techies, military types and a few civilians deployed to the new Irvine, Calif., headquarters of Anduril Industries, a defense tech start-up, to sip hibiscus margaritas and admire the sensor towers and carbon-fiber drones on display. Dave Brubeck tinkled over the sound system, and the dress code skewed office casual and pastel, offset by the bright red pop of a lone “Make America Great Again” hat by the taco bar. After an hour of socializing amid surveillance equipment, Palmer Luckey, the company’s 26-year-old near-billionaire founder, mounted a stage for the ribbon-cutting....

First Amazon, then Google, and now Apple have all confirmed that their devices are not only listening to you, but complete strangers may be reviewing the recordings. Thanks to Siri, Apple contractors routinely catch intimate snippets of users’ private lives like drug deals, doctor’s visits, and sexual escapades as part of their quality control duties, the Guardian reported Friday. As part of its effort to improve the voice assistant, “[a] small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation,” Apple told the Guardian. That involves sending these recordings sans Apple IDs to its international team of contractors...

[R]esearchers discovered how to trigger the body ownership illusion using visual cues alone. They did this by tracking the subject’s body movements in microfine detail, the level of hand and finger movements. They then reproduced these movements exactly in the virtual body. ...work focuses on three types of virtual bodies—a four-legged animal in the form of a tiger, a flying animal in the form of a bat, and a creature with an entirely different exoskeleton in the form of a spider. Their goal is to explore the limits of body ownership with challenging examples that differ from human bodies in...

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that, based on sources and documents it had obtained from a former Huawei employee, the company had “secretly helped” Pyongyang build and maintain North Korea’s commercial wireless network. Huawei partnered with Panda International Information Technology, a Chinese state-owned firm, on a number of projects spanning at least eight years, according to The Post’s report. The revelations raise questions about whether Huawei, which has used American technology in its components, violated US export controls to furnish equipment to North Korea, where the isolated regime has faced extensive international sanctions over its nuclear weapons programme and...

Spalding continued, “When you look at America today, we have no telecommunication equipment manufacturers left that are American companies. When China entered the WTO in 2001, from that time period to 2017, we lost 78,000 factories. We unemployed 3.4 million manufacturing jobs. In the same time, we spent trillions in the Middle East.” “We fell into this trap of believing that open markets lead to wealth, and wealth leads to democracy, and, therefore, if we just open ourselves up to the world, that the world would automatically democratize,” noted Spalding. “In the space of that 20 years, we essentially deindustrialized...

“Deepfakes” refers to media that has been altered by artificial intelligence to make it appear that a person is doing or saying something that, in fact, that person has never done or said. The technology first began appearing a few years ago, with crude deepfake tools allowing users to make it look like celebrities were recorded engaging in sexual activities they actually didn’t take part in. But deepfakes are now moving past the porn realm and into the criminal world where bad actors are using the tech to impersonate CEOs, Axios reports. However, for now, it appears criminals are using deepfake...

There’s something about cameras that seems to divide our nation, while at the same time pointing out dizzying differences in terms of how we evaluate the technology based on who is using it. We already know that privacy advocates (for lack of a better term) hate facial recognition software when it’s used by law enforcement of any kind. However, most of them don’t seem to have any problems with Facebook and other social media apps “tagging” them and their friends at the latest party. Speed cameras are also seen as being evil, even if they do occasionally catch violent felons...

Back in the day, I was one of the first people to start using Google as a search engine. I liked it’s clean interface, and simplicity. Of course, over the years, other people also found this to be the preferential search engine. Unfortunately, Google became big, powerful and yes, evil. They siphon up your personal information with zero regard to fourth amendment protections. They sell the information to the highest bidder, and give it away for free if the person is part of a government agency. Unfortunately, people like myself VALUE privacy. And that means that I no longer can...

Lawmakers are questioning the extensive use of facial recognition technology after the Government Accountability Office revealed that the FBI can scan about 640 million pictures, to include drivers licenses, passport photos and mug shots. Further, recent reports revealed that federal law enforcement agencies are mining driver’s license databases in 21 states for information without the consent or knowledge of American’s in the system. Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, warned on Twitter Tuesday that the government’s unlimited and unauthorized access to private information “should concern every American.” He linked a fantastic story...

Australian researchers describe the first observation of a native ferroelectric metal: a native metal with bistable and electrically switchable spontaneous polarization states—the hallmark of ferroelectricity. The study found coexistence of native metallicity and ferroelectricity in bulk crystalline tungsten ditelluride (WTe2) at room temperature. A van-der-Waals material that is both metallic and ferroelectric in its bulk crystalline form at room temperature has potential for nano-electronics applications. The study represents the first example of a native metal with bistable and electrically switchable spontaneous polarization states—the hallmark of ferroelectricity. "We found coexistence of native metallicity and ferroelectricity in bulk crystalline tungsten ditelluride (WTe2)...

In 2019, you don’t have to be just afraid of hackers who may leak your closely guarded private photos. A newly developed artificial neural network only needs to be fed a normal picture to replace your clothes with what's under them. An anonymous ‘technology enthusiast’ has created an app which is able to undress a fully clothed person within a couple of clicks, triggering concerns over the ethics of such technology and non-consensual photo sharing. The app in question is called DeepNude – a play on the new term deepfake – an AI-assisted technology that superimposes faces onto other bodies...

I sat at a banquet a week ago with a guy who started up, worked, then sold his wholesale machinist biz, in our Sacramento CA suburb, Rancho Cordova. That’s where the money is, in the long run, but for young people starting out, a starting wage of $20, up to $26, is not chopped liver. The happy-stance is that the computer control programming, like specialty AutoCAD, for 3D printing, at local education specialty clubs and for hobbyists, strongly resembles the professional computer application software for machinist vocational training, that now goes by the jargon CNC, for Computer Numerical Control. Our...

The U.S. military’s Defense Innovation Board warned Congress that China’s fifth generation telecommunications rollout is designed to interfere with U.S. weapons systems. The Congressional Research Service issued a report titled ‘National Security Implications of Fifth Generation (5G) Mobile Technologies’ that highlights China’s incorporating “Low to Mid-Band” electromagnetic spectrum into its 5G wireless networks and technology will directly interfere with the U.S. military systems and secure government communications. Mobile data upgrades are implemented about every 10 years. AT&T and Verizon began rapid deployment of fourth generation long-term evolution (4G LTE) mobile data technology in 2010 that was about 10 times faster...

Here’s A Proposal To Hurt Big Tech When It Censors Conservative Users https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/17/sears-big-tech/

Still don't think deepfakes will be a problem? The tech is getting so good it's scary. Can you tell the difference in these videos between the fake and the real thing? A horrible version of Trump went viral in Belgium and caused mass outrage. So what happens when the tech is spot on? https://youtu.be/NWhyTk7cZdI

Now, a story in the Sunday Telegraph is just the latest to pose serious questions. The newspaper reports that China has been "rigging" 5G equipment testing to discredit Huawei's rivals, including Nokia and Ericsson. According to government and industry sources, "Beijing is feeding secret details of security vulnerabilities" to the testers to tip the balance in Huawei's favor. The testing encompasses "hacking techniques used to check for weak spots... vulnerabilities discovered by China’s secret state hackers have been passed to the 5G testers to ensure Nokia and Ericsson’s equipment is found to be insecure." Huawei's security issues have always been...

As things stand, America is likely to lose the tech war with China. The stock market should be sending a message to President Trump. U.S. semiconductor stocks are down 20% in the past month, and the broad market has been in freefall for a week. This is a war we can win, by mobilizing American ingenuity to produce technology that will crush the competition. No-one ever won a war by trying to stop someone else from doing something. I'm an Always Trumper, and I want the president to win another term. But he's risking the U.S. economy and his re-election...

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was one of the earlier 2020 candidates to propose breaking up the largest tech companies and potentially having the government regulate them like utilities. It’s a mantra she’s repeated on the campaign trail on a regular basis. But now she’s doubling down on the message with a campaign tactic that may not make the most sense. Her team has put up a massive billboard on the subject, which isn’t all that unusual for a political campaign. It’s the location that makes it peculiar. She put it up right in Silicon Valley near many of the Big...