tag > Military
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Minnesota is now using contact tracing to track protestors, as demonstrations escalate
Minnesota protests are continuing to escalate and inspire similar demonstrations around the country in the wake of police killing an unarmed Minneapolis man this week named George Floyd. Minnesota officials say they’re using contact tracing to better understand who the protestors are and where they’re coming from. Contact tracing has previously been used as part of a comprehensive coronavirus response.
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Kurt Blome - a comic book biological warfare villain
Kurt Blome (1894, 1969) was a high-ranking Nazi scientist before and during World War II. He was the Deputy Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. In his autobiography Arzt im Kampf (A Physician's Struggle), he equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death. Blome was tried at the Doctors' Trial in 1947 on charges of practicing euthanasia and conducting experiments on humans. In 1951, he was hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps under Project 63, one of the successors to Operation Paperclip, to work on chemical warfare. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg.
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Booz Allen Hamilton wins massive Pentagon artificial intelligence contract
Booz Allen Hamilton won a five-year, $800 million task order to provide artificial intelligence services to the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Under the contract award, announced by the General Services Administration and the JAIC on May 18, Booz Allen Hamilton will provide a “wide mix of technical services and products” to support the JAIC, a DoD entity dedicated to advancing the use of artificial intelligence across the department.
The Pentagon’s Joint AI Center wants to be like Silicon Valley
It was a busy week for defense-focused AI: DarwinAI signed a partnership with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, to work on explainable AI solutions. Robotics company Sphero, maker of the BB-8 droid from Star Wars, spun out Company Six, which will focus on military and emergency medical applications. And Google Cloud was awarded a Pentagon contract for its multi-cloud solution Anthos this week, even though the $10 billion JEDI contract between AWS and Microsoft Azure is still tied up in courts.
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FEMA Tells States to Hand Public Health Data Over to Palantir
"If their AI learns to infer and predict patterns of the disease from our public data, then that becomes a hugely lucrative advantage for Palantir, especially now when every business sector wants to know where COVID is going and how hard it’s going to hit"
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Oil prices dip below zero as producers forced to pay to dispose of excess (Guardian)
US crude fell to negative value for first time in history as stockpiles overwhelmed storage facilities, before rebounding to just over $1 on Tuesday
When oil became waste: a week of turmoil for crude, and more pain to come (Reuters)
The magnitude of how damaged the energy industry is came into full view on April 20 when the benchmark price of U.S. oil futures, which had never dropped below $10 a barrel in its nearly 40-year history, plunged to a previously unthinkable minus $38 a barrel.
As US Shale Oil Plunges, Trump Admin Takes Aim at Venezuela (Mintpress)
A confluence of factors suggests that such a Panama-style invasion of Venezuela is not only a possibility, but increasingly likely.
US crude prices tumble as world’s largest oil ETF backs out (FT)
West Texas Intermediate drops more than 27% one week after sub-zero dive
Russia Steals Chinese Oil Market Share From Saudi Arabia (oilprice.com)
China imported 31 percent more oil from Russia last month while its intake of Saudi crude slipped by 1.8 percent compared to March 2019, Reuters reported, citing calculations based on official customs data. Overall crude oil imports rose by 4.5% on the year to 9.68 million bpd.
How much is a barrel of oil worth? (resilient.org)
If you were an oil futures trader wanting to unload a May 1 contract on Monday, April 20, a barrel of oil was worth $-37. That’s right, traders were, in effect, willing to pay someone—anyone—to take ownership of a commodity that powers modern industrial society, and has suddenly become too abundant.
The Next Chapter of the Oil Crisis: The Industry Shuts Down (Yahoo Finance)
Negative oil prices, ships dawdling at sea with unwanted cargoes, and traders getting creative about where to stash oil. The next chapter in the oil crisis is now inevitable: great swathes of the petroleum industry are about to start shutting down.
Oil Slides After Crude ETFs Move Into Later-Dated Contracts (Yahoo Finance)
Oil fell after the biggest oil ETF said it would sell out of its June WTI futures position as physical oil storage levels continue to balloon.
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Maximator: European signals intelligence cooperation, from a Dutch perspective
This article is first to report on the secret European five-partner sigint alliance Maximator that started in the late 1970s. It discloses the name Maximator and provides documentary evidence. The five members of this European alliance are Denmark Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. The cooperation involves both signals analysis and crypto analysis. The Maximator alliance has remained secret for almost fifty years, in contrast to its Anglo-Saxon Five-Eyes counterpart.
Market Forces: The development of the EU Security-Industrial Complex
Despite the economic crisis, EU funding for new security tools and technologies will double in the 2014-20 period compared to the previous 6 years. The biggest winners have been the “homeland security” industry whose influence on European policy continues to grow, constructing an ever more militarised and security-focused Europe.
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Chinese Tech Landscape Overview - by National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence
The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) was established in August 2018 as part of the military budget "to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States."
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This is a test: Do NOT think of a Zebra right now.
"I'm feeling anxious and vulnerable" - Disgustingly manipulative predictive programming - by BBC
"you are ugly, stupid and worthless" - is the mantra of the advertising industry
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Brain Warfare: The Covert Sphere, Terrorism, And The Legacy Of The Cold War - Essay By Timothy Melley (MITPress, 2011)
On October 2, 2005, three months after the coordinated bombing of the London transportation system and three days before the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved John McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke attempted to explain terrorism via a specter of the Cold War. Islamic terrorists, Clarke argued, should not be seen in the “‘classic’ mould of revolutionaries fighting for a political cause.” Rather, they are like educated youths “brainwashed”into joining cults. Indeed, Clarke added, perhaps “anti-brainwashing techniques”could be used to “deprogramme” terrorists—converting them back to productive citizens essentially by running brainwashing protocols in reverse.
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Apple and Google partner on COVID-19 contact tracing technology (Google)
Across the world, governments and health authorities are working together to find solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, to protect people and get society back up and running. Software developers are contributing by crafting technical tools to help combat the virus and save lives. In this spirit of collaboration, Google and Apple are announcing a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design.
[...] Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort, and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders. We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyze.
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Air Force, SpaceX to test Starlink capabilities in upcoming live-fire demonstration (AirforceTimes)
The Air Force will test SpaceX-developed technology in an upcoming demonstration that will reportedly include a live-fire exercise targeting drones and cruise missiles, the latest test of experimental technologies. The April 8 event, the next iteration of the military’s Advanced Battle Management System exercises, takes place at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona; White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; and Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, Defense Daily reported.
Why SpaceX is Making Starlink - Video by Real Engineering
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Microsoft Patents New Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data
Microsoft has patented a cryptocurrency mining system that leverages human activities, including brain waves and body heat, when performing online tasks such as using search engines, chatbots, and reading ads. “A user can solve the computationally difficult problem unconsciously,” the patent reads.
#Technology #Health #Biology #Military #Crypto #Economics #Cryptocracy
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Hackers target Chinese government agencies, diplomatic missions and WHO amid pandemic (SCMP)
More than 200 VPN servers have been compromised in a massive campaign by hackers, according to a report by leading Chinese internet provider Qihoo 360. The report attributed the attacks to advanced hacker group DarkHotel
Facebook Asks Users About Coronavirus Symptoms, Releases Friendship Data To Researchers (reuters.com)
Facebook said on Monday it would start surveying some U.S. users about their health as part of a Carnegie Mellon University research project aimed at generating "heat maps" of self-reported coronavirus infections.
