U.S. government warns of North Korean hackers sending spoofed emails to gather intelligence.
Category: government – Page 25
China Shows Off Monkey With Brain Chip Allowing It to Control Robotic Arm
A Chinese company says it’s successfully developed a brain chip and implanted it into a monkey — who can now remotely control a robot arm with the device.
That’s according to state-run news media outfit Xinhua, putting Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink on notice that there will be international as well as domestic competition for his brain-computer interface venture.
The company, Beijing Xinzhida Neurotechnology, which is backed by the Chinese government, unveiled its device, the NeuCyber Array BMI (brain-machine interface) System at a technology convention in Beijing on Thursday, according to Reuters.
Bipartisan Effort Demands DEA Action on Marijuana Scheduling
Read how Congress is pressing the DEA to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug to Schedule III.
Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning these are “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” However, a team of 21 bipartisan congressional leaders from both the Senate and House of Representatives hopes to change that as they recently sent a letter to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) pushing them to “promptly remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)”, noting that almost eight months had passed “since the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III — and 18 months since President Biden directed HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to begin the process of reviewing marijuana’s scheduling.”
Examples of other Schedule I drugs include heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote, while Schedule III drugs include Tylenol, ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone. Additionally, the penalties between Schedule I and Schedule III drugs also demonstrate stark contrasts, as well.
The 21 congressional leaders take it even farther than requesting marijuana be reclassified as a Schedule III drug, as they state, “As explained in our prior letters, while a move to Schedule III would be a meaningful improvement, the only way to remedy the most concerning consequences of marijuana prohibition is to deschedule marijuana altogether.”
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. — Science And Technology For Emerging National Security Threats
Science And Technology For Emerging National Security Threats — Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. — Nonlinear Solutions LLC — Fmr. Director, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), United States Department of Defense.
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. is Owner of Nonlinear Solutions LLC., an advisory group that provides strategic scientific and intelligence consulting services, with a focus on emerging science and technology trends, to clients in both the defense and intelligence communities.
Dr. Kirkpatrick recently retired from federal Senior Service in December 2023 and prior to his current responsibilities he answered to the Deputy Secretary of Defense to stand-up and lead the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO — https://www.aaro.mil/) in early 2022, leading the U.S. government’s efforts to address Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach.
Dr. Kirkpatrick attended University of Georgia as an undergraduate, to study physics, where he also did his Ph.D. work in nonlinear and nonequilibrium phonon dynamics of rare earth doped fluoride crystals, and currently serves as an adjunct professor at UGA.
Dr. Kirkpatrick began his career in Defense and Intelligence related science and technology immediately out of graduate school. After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics in 1995, he subsequently took a postdoctoral position at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, investigating laser-induced molecular vibrations of high explosives under an AFOSR program. In 1996, he was offered a National Research Council Fellowship at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. investigating novel solid-state lasers for the Department of the Navy. In 1997, he was recruited by the Air Force Research Laboratory to build an Ultrafast Laser Physics Lab to investigate nonlinear optics, novel ultrafast spectroscopic methods, and nonlinear micro/nano-fabrication techniques for the Air Force.
A National Security Insider Does the Math on the Dangers of AI
Jason Matheny is a delight to speak with, provided you’re up for a lengthy conversation about potential technological and biomedical catastrophe.
Now CEO and president of Rand Corporation, Matheny has built a career out of thinking about such gloomy scenarios. An economist by training with a focus on public health, he dived into the worlds of pharmaceutical development and cultivated meat before turning his attention to national security.
As director of Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the US intelligence community’s research agency, he pushed for more attention to the dangers of biological weapons and badly designed artificial intelligence. In 2021, Matheny was tapped to be President Biden’s senior adviser on technology and national security issues. And then, in July of last year, he became CEO and president of Rand, the oldest nonprofit think tank in the US, which has shaped government policy on nuclear strategy, the Vietnam War, and the development of the internet.
TSMC to charge premium for making chips outside of Taiwan, including its new US fabs, CEO says
Indeed, the costs of building fabs in Germany, Japan, and the U.S. are higher than the costs of building fabs in Taiwan and TSMC has complained about it a number of times in the past. The company even had to delay production start at its Fab 21 near Phoenix, Arizona, due to problems with tools installation and negotiations with trade unions.
Therefore, if a TSMC customer wants to produce its chips at a specific location, then the foundry will charge a premium. How high is that premium will be remains to be seen, but last year a media report indicated that chips made in Arizona on TSMC’s N5 and N4 production nodes could be from 20% to 30% more expensive than the same chips produced in Taiwan.
Due to higher construction and operational expenses of fabs in Japan, Germany, and the U.S., TSMC plans to transfer these additional costs to its customers to sustain its target gross margin of 53%. Although American chip designers may not welcome the increased production costs in the U.S., they will probably manufacture chips intended for government and other markets less sensitive to price increases at the Arizona facility. Consequently, they should manage to pass on these higher costs to at least some of their end customers without jeopardizing their market competitiveness.
Neom — The Line — The Rise and Fall of Saudi Arabia’s Linear City
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Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a 170km long, 500m tall, mirrored city in the desert, filled with 9 million people has been curtailed to 2.4km long.
According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia’s government has “scaled back its medium-term ambitions” for Neom, of which The Line is the most significant sub-project.
The Saudi government had hoped to have 9 million residents living in \.
Hackers stole 340,000 Social Security numbers from government consulting firm
GMA provides economic and litigation support to companies and U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, bringing civil litigation. According to its data breach notice, GMA told affected individuals that their personal information “was obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) as part of a civil litigation matter” supported by GMA.
The reasons and target of the DOJ’s civil litigation are not known. A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
GMA said that individuals notified of the data breach are “not the subject of this investigation or the associated litigation matters,” and that the cyberattack “does not impact your current Medicare benefits or coverage.”
NSA Expert: Quantum Computing to Enter Workforce in 3 to 5 Years
A national security expert predicts practical quantum computing tools are just three to five years away from integration into the workforce, NextGov is reporting.
Neal Ziring, the Technical Director of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Cybersecurity Directorate, made the forecast during a recent public sector cybersecurity event hosted by Palo Alto Networks in Palo Alto. As reported by NextGov, Ziring expects the devices to be accessible predominantly through cloud-based platforms.
Ziring added that the impracticality and cost-prohibitive nature of would put on-premise installations for quantum computing systems out of reach for most organizations, including government agencies.